Seeds of Fascism: Century-Old Soiled Hanky Could Enable Cloning of Carnaro Regency’s Tin-Pot Dictator-Prince

Sometimes there’s a theme in a week’s minor news stories, and this week it seems to be: the mislaid spermatazoa of flamboyantly (even specifically upward-turning!) mustachioed Mediterranean fascist-sympathizing bohemian egomaniacs.  First, there was the news that one Pilar Abel, a 58-year-old Spaniard, was filing a paternity suit against the estate of Salvador Dalí, claiming the bombastic Catalan surrealist painter had had an affair with her mother while he was married to Gala Diakonova Éluard Dalí, his Tatarstan-born Russo-Spanish muse.  Of course, the case will get tossed right out; after all, she looks nothing like him:

And now there is the news that police in Italy have used a semen-stained handkerchief to map the genome of Gabriele d’Annunzio, an Italian poet, playwright, and ennobled prince who founded his own authoritarian micronation of sorts, the Regency of Carnaro, in 1919, and styled himself “il Duce” (“the Leader”) in anticipation of the eventual rise of Benito Mussolini.  The aristocratic snail tracks were sent, in 1916, to Countess Olga Levi Brunner, d’Annunzio’s mistress, and were preserved for most of a century in a private collection in Cagliari, Sardinia.  The hanky is now housed with other Annunziana at the Vittoriale degli Italiani (“Shrine of Italian Victories”) museum at his the prince’s former home on Lake Garda in Lombardy.

Gabriele d’Annunzio, Prince of Montenevoso

In the aftermath of the First World War, the Kingdom of Italy and the fledgling Kingdom of Yugoslavia were still squabbling over where their final border would be.  D’Annunzio, a wildly popular poet and war hero, in 1919 marched a makeshift army into Fiume—a then-Italian-populated town which today is on the Croatia side of the border and named Rijeka—and claimed it for Italy.  Italy’s King Victor Immanuel III, however, wanted no part of the plot and declined to formally reabsorb the enclave.  So d’Annunzio—an androgynous and wildly prolific bisexual erotic conqueror who followed the Italian art movement called Decadentism and whose megalomaniacal nicknames for himself included “il Magnifico” (“the Magnificent”) and “il Profeto” (“the Prophet”)—declared the town the Regency of Carnaro (Reggenza Italiana del Carnaro) and ran it as his de facto–independent personal fief for a year before the Italian navy retook the town.  Carnaro’s bizarre constitution, which was a piece of performance art in itself, declared “music” to be the founding political principle of the state, but d’Annunzio’s bombastic balcony speeches and black-shirted militias anticipated—some would say laid the groundwork for—the capital-F Fascism which later, in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, swallowed up Italy and half of Europe.  (Carnaro was later known as the Free State of Fiume (Stato Libero di Fiume) and in 1924 was formally attached to Italy.  After the Second World War, despite an attempt to revive the Carnaro entity, it reverted to Yugoslavian control.)

Olga Brunner, the prince’s mistress.
She’d better wait till the maid leaves the room before opening the mail.

Two years after Mussolini came to power in Italy in 1922 and began gently bending the monarchy to his will, Victor Immanuel III ennobled d’Annunzio as “Prince of Montenevoso”—the geographical principality in question being an Alpine town and district then within Italy but now known as Snežnik, in the Republic of Slovenia.

Poor Prince Gabriele: before the age of smartphones and “sexting,”
little ... um ... presents had to be sent through the royal mails.

D’Annunzio’s semen and its DNA are being used for comparison with his great-grandson Federico d’Annunzio, the current Prince of Montenevoso (Italy, a republic, nonetheless retains a semi-official aristocracy), and all press reports indicate that it is a test run for forensic genomics that does not rely on exhumation.  Though one wonders if something else is going on.  A succession dispute or paternity case?

In the waning days of the Second World War, a second try
at an independent Carnaro also claimed some now-Croatian islands in the Adriatic.

Indeed, the chief of the museum which owns the crusty rag, Giordano Bruno Guerri, raised, in an interview, the specter of a kind of small-scale version of The Boys from Brazil, musing that theoretically the poet, whom Italians regard as ambivalent sort of national hero and who died in 1938, could now be cloned.  “Nobody wants to clone d’Annunzio,” Guerri hastily clarified, “but nobody knows what changes will take place in science and society.  It’s good the DNA has been collected.”  Hmm, hard to know where he’s going with that.  If Guerri is planning to clone and breed a Decadentist pro-Fascist aristocracy to wrest control of Italy from corrupt republican politicos and imperialist Teutonic creditors, then where will it end?  We may have to swipe Monica Lewinsky’s dress from the Department of Justice’s evidence vault and clone an army of Bill Clintons to stop him.  Who’s in?

[You can read more about the Free State of Fiume, the Regency of Carnaro, and other bizarre and obscure separatist movements in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this special announcement for more information on the book.]

After Crimea, Transnistria, Then Donetsk ... and Alaska? and Sardinia?? Annexation Fever Sweeps Globe

With a stroke of the pen, Crimea becomes Russian.

First, Crimea.  Next, many fear, Transnistria, or Abkhazia or South Ossetia, or eastern Ukraine ... except Donetsk, which might want to join ... the United Kingdom?  And, after that, the Kremlin lunges for ... Alaska??

Russia’s annexation of Crimea this month has proven to be a game-changer in international relations on a vast scale.  More immediately, the proliferation of independence movements, as typically chronicled in this blog, now seems to be overshadowed for the moment by a flurry of interest in annexation.  Last year, this blog examined a desire by some indigenous people on Easter Island to leave Chile and join French Polynesia.  Orcadians and Shetlanders (as also chronicled in this blog) are reminding their more separatist Scots compatriots that there may be a legal basis for reexamining if the Orkneys and Shetlands might really be part of the Kingdom of Denmark, not Scotland or the U.K.  And, as just reported recently in this blog, Albanian-speakers in Serbia are reviving the idea of Albania annexing their little valley.  Not at all frivolously, the international community worries that many heretofore independentist movements along Russia’s outer rim may be turning annexationist instead.  Some of these new developments (Transnistria) can be taken more seriously than others (Alaska), but it is definitely a trend.  Read on ...

Crimea’s awkward resonances: Austrian girls celebrating Germany’s annexation
of Austria in 1938, which used the same rationales as Putin uses today

Transnistria
The Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, also known as Pridnestrovia or, in English, Transdniestria or Transnistria, is a sliver of the Republic of Moldova just over the Dniester River alongside Ukraine which in 1990 seceded from Moldova but as yet has not been recognized by any other state.  This Russian puppet state’s half-million people are roughly one-third ethnic Russian, one-third ethnic Ukrainian, and one-third ethnic Moldovan (i.e. Romanian-speakers).  Last week, for the first time, Transnistria formally requested the Russian Federation to annex the territory, and the Russian government was at last report officially considering the idea.

Is Transnistria next?

The territory’s foreign minister, Nina Shtanski, formerly known mostly for her flamboyantly fashionable garb and fashion-model looks, said this week, “We are pleased to say that the outcome of the Crimean referendum almost fully coincides with the results of the Transdniestrian referendum of 17 September 2006, when over 97 per cent of voters chose independence and the prospect of voluntary unification with Russia.  The obvious match of the will expressed by people in Crimea and Transdniestria demonstrates that the Russian World is uniting and the people’s wish for unity cannot be stopped.”  (Last week in this blog, I examined the possibility of annexation of Transnistria, along with, possibly, South Ossetia and Abkhazia.)

Tiraspol or ... um ... bust: Transnistria’s foreign minister
shoots Russian troops a “come hither and annex us” look.

Philip Breedlove, a United States Air Force general who is supreme commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), on March 23rd identified Transnistria as the next possible trouble spot. He said Russia has “absolutely sufficient force”—a “very, very sizeable and very, very ready” force—“postured on the eastern border of Ukraine to run to Transdniestria if the decision was made to do that, and that is very worrisome.”

Posters in Transnistria assert, “We are not Moldova!” and remind citizens
of the date of the 2006 referendum on joining Russia.

Meanwhile, according to Russian “peacekeepers” in Transnistria, the Ukrainian government has sealed off the Ukrainian–Moldovan (i.e. de facto Ukrainian–Transnistrian) border, specifically blocking males with Russian passports from crossing into the separatist enclave.  And Russia has augmented its 500-some “peacekeepers” with a totally unconnected and coincidental military exercise in Transnistria featuring more than 8,000 Russian soldiers.  As with Crimea and Ukraine, a Transnistrian annexation would have the advantage for Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, of making sure that Moldova, with a disputed territory on its eastern rim, would stay out of the European Union (E.U.) and NATO for the foreseeable future, let alone reunifying, as most ethnic Moldovans and Romanians would like, with Romania, which is an E.U. and NATO member.  Watch this space for Transnistrian developments (and, probably, lots more photos of Nina Shtanski).

Nina Shtanski, Transnistria’s minister for foreign affairs,
vamps for the cameras at a cabinet photo-op

Southern and eastern Ukraine
Though Transnistria does not border either Crimea or any part of Russia proper, it does border Ukraine’s primarily Russian-speaking Odessa Oblast; in between Odessa and Crimea is Ukraine’s Novorossiya (“New Russia”) region dominated by Russian-speakers.  Even the Soviet Union’s last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, has said that Novorossiya and Crimea are essentially part of Russia, not Ukraine.  (Gorbachev, though he is a Nobel laureate and ranked somewhere between Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi by adoring Westerners for allowing the Soviet satellites of Central Europe and the Balkans to break free, he is regarded by nervous non-Russians still under the Kremlin’s thumb as the brute who sent tanks into Lithuania and by Russian nationalists as the Neville Chamberlain–esque buffoon who naïvely capitulated to the enemy.)

The future?

It seems likely that Russian forces could at least establish a supply corridor along the Black Sea coast to supply the semi-landlocked Transnistria, via the desirable warm-water harbor at Odessa, and possible that they could widen that corridor into more territory to annex.  For that, Russia would need the support of the Russian-speaking population.  Unlike in Crimea, mainland Ukraine’s Russian-speakers often identify themselves as nationally or ethnically Ukrainian, not Russian.  But Ukrainian as a national identity completely distinct from Russian is a relatively recent development.  Russophones’ sense that they are “Russian-speaking Ukrainians” could quickly give way to a reidentification with Russia—as is already true of an unknown but surely large number of them.

Meanwhile, Sergey “Goblin” Aksyonov, the unelected Russian-installed president of Crimea, a former boxer with organized-crime links, is asking Russian-speakers in Ukraine’s south and east to do just that: rise up.  “Today,” he said on March 23rd, “I appeal to you with a call to fight,” adding that he was “deeply convinced” that the destiny of southeastern Ukraine “rested in a close union with the Russian Federation—a political, economic and cultural union.”

Russian ultranationalist annexationists demonstrate in Donetsk.
The black and orange emblem is the Soviet-era “St. George’s Ribbon” for military valor
—here jauntily adapted to the armband format for that Gestapo feel.

Donetsk
Last week (March 19th) in Donetsk, capital of the home oblast of Ukraine’s recently toppled ethnically-Russian pro-Kremlin president, Viktor Yanukovych, it was reported that pro-Kremlin activists were passing out “referendum ballots” on the street, with a single question as to whether Donetsk Oblast should be part of Russia or Ukraine.  (This follows a dramatic aborted coup d’état last month, reported at the time in this blog here and here, in which a former neo-Nazi named Pavel Gubarev declared an independent Donetsk Republic and invited Russian troops in, before being arrested himself.)  Annexation petitions continue to circulate, and annexationists have been demonstrating daily under the city’s statue of Vladimir Lenin.  Counterdemonstrations by Ukrainian unionists have also been prominent.  The city seems to be fairly evenly divided.

But some pranksters are using satire to make their point about flimsy irredentist pretexts.  An unknown group is circulating on social media a petition to make the city of Donetsk part of the United Kingdom. The reasoning is that Donetsk was founded as a factory town in 1869 by a businessman from Wales named John Hughes.  The town was originally called Yuzovka, which to Russian ears sounds close enough to Hughes’s name.  Though the petition gathered over 7,000 signatures in the first few days, there was almost certainly no hope behind it.  The prank can also be seen as a dark commentary on how different things would be if Ukraine, or any part of it, were in NATO.

John Hughes’ statue in downtown Donetsk—almost as heroic-looking as Lenin’s

Russia’s “far abroad”: Alaska
Much of the concern over where Putin might seek to march his soldiers next has focused on what Russian nationalists call their “near abroad,” i.e. the parts of the former Soviet Union outside the Russian Federation.  But these are not the only formerly Russian-ruled parts of the world, if Moscow wants to get truly ambitious in their irredentism.  There is also Russian America, i.e. Alaska, which Czar Alexander II sold to the United States in 1867.  Now there is a new petition on the White House’s “We the People” online petition page titled “Alaska Back to Russia.”  Placed there on March 21st, the petition gathered over 10,000 signatures in three days.  At this writing (March 25th), it has 24,129, almost a quarter of the way to the 100,000 required for an obligatory response from the White House.  As reported in this blog at the time, this petition site was the forum for a raft of declarations of independence from the U.S. following the reelection of Barack Obama in 2012.  Not surprisingly, most of those were from the former Confederate States of America, but all states were represented (plus the Republic of Molossia and the State of Jefferson), and only Texas’s petition reached 100,000.  (Obama’s answer: fuhgeddaboudit.)

The good old days—at least according to 24,129 Alaskans

It is hard to know what to make of the “back to Russia” petition.  The petitions are posted anonymously, as are the signatures, but the location of the originating computer is recorded, and this one was posted by someone in Anchorage.  That doesn’t mean he or she is an American citizen.  In fact, this petition’s tortured syntax can well be imagined as that of a Russian with partial knowledge of English.  It reads: “Groups Siberian russians crossed the Isthmus (now the Bering Strait) 16-10 thousand years ago.  Russian began to settle on the Arctic coast, Aleuts inhabited the Aleutian Archipelago.  First visited Alaska August 21, 1732, members of the team boat St. Gabriel under the surveyor Gvozdev and assistant navigator I. Fedorov during the expedition Shestakov and DI Pavlutski 1729-1735 years.  Vote for secession of Alaska from the United States and joining Russia.”  Although it is approximately as coherent and sound as Putin’s rationale for invading Crimea, it is difficult to know if this is a Russian or American attempting a parody of the Crimean situation or if it is the work of a Russian provocateur trying to stir up separatism in Alaska.  The latter sounds unlikely until one considers the off-kilter understanding that even powerful Russian officials seem to have of the West.  The Russian media are full of stories about all the separatist movements in Europe and America—as though the existence of a few drooling hillbillies with “Republic of Texas” bumper stickers on their bricked-up pick-ups somehow are evidence that Obama is a rank hypocrite for objecting to Crimean separatism.  Perhaps the petition is the work of a bored and slightly unhinged Russian agent’s idea of “stirring the pot.”

In 1826, Russian settlers and Tlingit Indians traded goods—and sometimes
gunfire—at Novo-Arkhangelsk, today called Sitka.  Could it happen again?

The frigid border area between Russia and America has been the focus of Russian nationalist nervousness before.  In 2011, as reported at the time in this blog, the online Pravda—which everyone but John McCain knows is not the Communist Party mouthpiece but a low-brow tabloid, a sort of Russian Weekly World News—ran a story reacting with alarm to little more than a possibly tongue-in-cheek Facebook campaign to turn Siberia over to the U.S.  (This idea had been advocated as long ago as 1861 by the Russian anarchist thinker Mikhail Bakhunin, who thought Siberia should be independent and should eventually ally itself with America so that revolutionary leftist ideas—in this case ideas so far left that they are practically far-right, and thus potentially appealing to modern Alaskans—can spread from Russia to North America.)  And in 2000, the Russian Orthodox archbishop for Siberia’s eastern tip sounded the alarm, claiming that Protestant missionaries among the local indigenous Chukchi people were an advance force for a planned American takeover of the vast Chukotka Autonomous Okrug.

Mikhail Bakunin, who was way more anarchist than Sarah Palin or Ron Paul,
had the opposite idea: absorb Siberia into the U.S.

Sardinia, the “Maritime Canton”?
Perhaps slightly more serious is a new proposal by separatists in the Autonomous Region of Sardinia to secede from the Italian Republic and join the Swiss Confederation as something called Canton Marittimo, i.e. “the Maritime Canton.”  The movement’s co-founder, Andrea Caruso, says, “People laugh when we say we should go to become part of Switzerland.  That’s to be expected.  But the madness does not lie in putting forward this kind of suggestion.  The madness lies in how things are now.”  This can be seen as a riposte to Sardinian separatists, who want to leave Italy but have, some say, unrealistic ideas about the costs of full independence.

A new separatist coalition in Sardinia called Sardinia Possible (Sardegna Possibile, or S.P.) made a disappointingly low showing in last month’s regional elections—instead of the projected 25%, they fell far short of the 10% threshold for keeping any seats at all in the regional parliament.  But why Switzerland?  Well, for one thing, Italian is already one of Switzerland’s official languages—though the Sardinian dialect of Italian is really a separate language, and is in some ways closer to Spanish than to the Italian spoken on the mainland.  For another, Switzerland is not in the E.U., which for many Sardinians nowadays is a plus, even if their anti-Brussels feeling does not stem from libertarianism or xenophobia as does that of separatists in northern Italy.

Additionally, there is possibly a sly joking reference in the idea to the fact that Swiss tourists are enamored of beaches, and a feeling during the summers that German-speakers already treat Mediterranean beaches as though they owned them.  A similar subtext underlay a tongue-in-cheek proposal two years ago by the island of Ikaria, in Greece, to be annexed by the Republic of Austria (as reported at the time in this blog).  Possibly not catching the joke, 83% of Austrians in a poll at the time thought annexing Ikaria was a good idea.  Similarly, a recent online poll of 4,000 German-speaking Swiss found 93% favored annexing Sardinia.  But it won’t happen.  Swiss are not only fiercely xenophobic—so xenophobic that even Italian-speaking Swiss are treated like dirty foreigners in Zurich and Bern—but enamored enough of their prosperity and stability that they would be loath to take on a dirt-poor territory, nearly as large as Switzerland itself, which is racked by organized crime and blood feuds.

Would she really trade that flag in for a square one?

Pipe dreams about Ikaria, Sardinia, and Alaska aside, there is nothing parodic or tongue-in-cheek about Putin’s imperialist ambitions.  Transnistria may very well be next.  Watch this space for developments.

Where will it end?

[You can read more about Transnistria, Alaska, Sardinia, the Donetsk People’s Republic, and other separatist movements both famous and obscure in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this special announcement for more information on the book.]

Transnistria’s foreign minister, Nina Shtanski, catches a Black Sea breeze.

Related articles from this blog:
“Serbia’s Albanians Turn Kosovo–Crimea Parallels on Their Head, Ask Tirana to Annex Preševo Valley” (March 2014)
“What Next after Crimea’s ‘Referendum’?” (March 2014)

“Islam and the Second Crimean War: Russian Invasion a Calamity for Tatars but a Recruitment Windfall for Jihadists” (March 2014)

“Donetsk Putsch Nipped in Bud, but Could Odessa or Kharkiv Be Next as Russia Eyes Ukrainian Mainland?” (March 2014)

“Second Crimean War Update: Western Credibility, Russian Lies, and Putin’s Next Steps (Hint: ‘Donetsk Republic’)” (March 2014)

“Ukraine Loses Grip on Crimea, Prepares for Open War with Russia; Role of Far Right in New Kiev Regime Unclear” (Feb. 2014)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Easter Island Wants to Split from Chile, Join French Polynesia” (Jan. 2013)

“Let a Thousand Secession Petitions Bloom: The U.S. Balkanized, but Perhaps Only on the White House Website, Nowhere Else—but Most Importantly: What Does All This Have to Do with Topless Car Washes and the State of Jefferson?” (Nov. 2012)

“The Tea Party Discovers Secessionism” (Nov. 2012)

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

“Gagauzia Threatens to Secede from Moldova If Nationalists Push Reunification with Romania” (Sept. 2012)

“Orkney—the Next Dubai? Further Reflections on Scottish Independence” (Feb. 2012)

“Language Referendum Pits Latvians against Russians” (Feb. 2012)
“Will Siberia Become the 51st State—or Maybe 51 through 77?” (Jan. 2012)

“South Ossetia Update: ‘Independent’ Elections in an ‘Independent’ State—Russian Style” (Dec. 2011)

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

Burma, Tibet, Kosovo, Naked Chick with a Chainsaw, Gorno-Badakhshan Crisis Ends, Jaz Coleman in Western Sahara, Palestinian Semen, Caprivi Strip: The Week in Separatist News, 12-18 August 2012

Photo of the week:  Whose hero is she?  Fans cheered this week at the London Olympics as Qieyang Shijie of China won a bronze in racewalking.  Or was that Choeyang Kyi of Tibet?  Fans couldn’t agree, but as far as Olympic historians can ascertain she is the first ethnic Tibetan to win an Olympic medal.

TOP STORY:
FIVE SELF-IMMOLATIONS IN TIBET
CHINESE RIOT POLICE BEAT PROTESTER TO DEATH

A Tibetan nomad set himself on fire on August 10th in the People’s Republic of China’s Sichuan province in protest over Chinese rule in Tibet, according to Free Tibet, an organization based in London.  The man, named Jopa, is 24 years old, and may not survive his injuries.  It was the third Tibetan self-immolation in China in the space of a week.  In Aba, the same prefecture as Jopa, a 21-year-old monk named Lobsang Tsultrim, had immolated himself four days earlier (a third Aba self-immolation could not be confirmed), and on August 7th, at a monastery in Gansu province, Dolkar Kyi, age 26, had used the same method.  The total self-immolations come to 40 in about a year and a half.  On August 13th, according to Radio Free Asia, the protests accelerated in Abe prefecture.  Two men, a Tibetan Buddhist monk named Lungtok and another Tibetan named Tashi, set themselves on fire, which resulted in a massive police intervention, a riot, four Tibetans being pulled from a car by riot police and beaten mercilessly, and one Tibetan protester being beaten to death.  Later, on August 15th, riot police opened fire on a crowd protesting a power plant in Choeten, in the Tibet Autonomous Region, killing one person.  Meanwhile, on August 12th the Tibetan Youth Congress in Dharamsala, India, where the Tibetan government-in-exile is based, announced an open-ended hunger strike in solidarity with the self-immolaters, to be launched in New Delhi on September 3rd, the day after Tibetan exiles’ Democracy Day celebrations.  [Related articles: “China, Tibet, and the Politics of Reincarnation” (March 2012), “10 Ethnonationalist Causes That Might Disrupt the Olympics” (July 2012).]

AFRICA

Somaliland and Khaatumo Rebels in Sool Ink Peace Agreement, but Strife Goes On.  The Republic of Somaliland inked a peace agreement August 12th with leaders from the rebellious Sool region in an attempt to end many months of conflict in a part of the unrecognized republic that is criss-crossed with counterclaims by quasi-states and tribal clans.  According to a statement released by Somaliland’s foreign-affairs ministry, the deal involves the immediate release of 86 Sool militiamen captured during the last two years of skirmishes, mostly in the Buhoodle region (near the border with Ethiopia) and elsewhere, and concrete steps toward stability by local leaders.  But a mere two days later, media were reporting that rebels loyal to the supposedly-dismantled rival quasi-state—variously called the Sool, Sanaag, and Cayn (S.S.C.) State or Khaatumo State—kidnapped four camel-driving nomads near Sool-Jogto, in Sool’s Buhoodle region.  The rebels, however, claim the four are soldiers in Somaliland’s military and that they are holding them captive in the town of Buhoodle pending the release of one Jama Kutiye, who they say is a political prisoner held by Somaliland.  Then, on August 16th, a water tanker was destroyed by a landmine in Sool.  Détente between Somaliland and a rival quasi-state centered on Soolbegan on June 28th, when Suleiman Isse Ahmed Kara (nom de guerre: “Hagaltosie”), S.S.C.’s supreme warlord, signed a “Reconciliation Declaration” with Ahmed Mahamoud Silanyo, Somaliland’s president.  Last week’s appointment of a Soodl rebel commander, Keyse Abdi Yusuf, as the republic’s Minister of State for National Reconciliation for Eastern Regions (as reported in this blog) accelerated the peace process.  To complicate matters, Sool is also claimed by the de facto independent Puntland State to the east (though Puntlanders have de facto given up on it).  [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), “Somaliland’s Own Mo Farah Clinches Olympic Immortality” (Aug. 2012).]

Gunmen Storm Puntland Jail in Attempt to Free Pirates.  The central jail in the Puntland half of the divided Somali city of Galkayo was attacked by gunmen August 12th in an attempt to free Somali-coast sea pirates held there by the de facto independent Puntland State of Somalia.  The jail break was unsuccessful.  Two of the attackers were injured and captured.  Galkayo is divided between Puntland and the similarly self-governing Galmudug State, which uses the southern half of the city as its capital.  [Related article: “Somalia the ‘Failed State’—So What Are Somaliland and Puntland? Chopped Liver?” (Feb. 2012).]

Biafra Zionists Apply to United Nations for Observer Status.  The Biafra Zionist Movement (B.Z.M.), a little-known separatist group in southeastern Nigeria, announced August 13th that it had, one week earlier, sent a formal application for membership in the United Nations General Assembly as an observer nation (the status accorded today to the Palestine National Authority and to international organizations and in the past to not-yet-member-states like Switzerland and Vatican City).  The B.Z.M.’s president, Benjamin Onwuka, a lawyer trained in the United Kingdom, sees his observer-status bid as a resumption of the Republic of Biafra’s quest for international recognition during the devastating Biafra War of 1967-1970.  Biafra, at the time, was only ever recognized by four other African nations, plus Haiti—and certainly not by the U.N., which is also certain, this time around, to file Onwuka’s letter in the round filing cabinet.  Last month (as reported at the time in this blog), Onwuka announced a planned declaration of independence for November 5th, amid high hopes for support from the United States—a speces of optimism that I can only speculate is the result of paint fumes.  At the time, a spokesman for the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), the primary—and comparatively gradualist—proponent of Biafran independence in Nigeria today, said that they had been unaware of the B.Z.M. and had nothing to do with them.  [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), “Ambazonian Separatists Focus on Bakassi Peninsula in New Push to Split Cameroon” (Aug. 2012).]

Biafra Zionists want U.N. recognition

41 Killed in Ongoing Boko Haram Insurgency in Nigeria.  The Nigerian military’s Joint Task Force (J.T.F.) killed 20 people August 11th in Nigeria’s far-northwestern Borno State who were suspected of being members of the Islamist militia Boko Haram.  The killings occurred in a shoot-out in Maiduguri, the state capital, after troops followed up on a tip by descending on a militant meeting in progress.  One soldier was also killed, and two others were injured.  Later, a Boko Haram statement said the 20 killed had all been civilians, not Boko Haram members.  In Gombe State, also in the northeast, gunmen trying to force their way into a Catholic church on August 12th killed one policeman and injured a second, while in Damaturu, in Yobe State, on the same day, militants ambushed and killed a policeman and nine soldiers while two Boko Haram fighters died in that incident and more than 30 were arrested—though some news sources do not mention the police and military fatalities.  On August 14th, three suspected would-be suicide-bombers died when the bombs they were carrying on their motorcycles detonated prematurely in Kaduna, in northern Nigeria, while en route to a mosque.  In Maiduguri on August 15th, a commuter was killed by a suicide bomber at a checkpoint, while two suspected Boko Haram members were shot dead by police in a public market.  On August 16th, a community leader was shot to death outside a mosque in Maiduguri, while the same day in Jos, in Plateau State, a police station was damaged by a bomb which also injured one person.  Meanwhile, police authorities in Kogi State, in the Middle Belt religion, now say that the killings of 20 Christians at a church in Otite on August 5th (reported last week in this blog) were not the work of Boko Haram.  [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).]

Malian Woman in Injured in Crossfire as Civilians Battle Ansar al-Dine in Azawad.  Sporadic unrest by the civilian population continued this week in northern Mali against the Islamist militias that rule the vast territory of Azawad after hijacking the Tuareg majority’s successful secession from Mali in March of this year.  In Niafunké, in the far south of Azawad’s Timbuktu region, near the border with Mali proper, it was reported August 16th that locals had fought with Ansar al-Dine, the militia which controls the town, and a woman was hit and injured by a stray bullet in the violence.  [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).]

Mombasa Republican Council May Be Legal, but Its Slogans Are Still Crimes.  Last month the Kenyan government’s ban on the Mombasa Republican Council (M.R.C.) was ordered lifted by a high-court ruling (as reported at the time in this blog), but Kenya’s top prosecutor, Keriako Tobiko, warned M.R.C. leaders this week that, although their organization was now allowed to exist, it was still a crime to chant their slogan, Pwani Si Kenya (“Coast Province Is Not Kenya”), since calling for the break-up of the republic is still against the law.  Coast Province, with its main city Mombasa, is the most heavily Muslim portion of a country that is otherwise mostly Christian.  Is the government really going to make the high court have to set time aside to guarantee free speech again?

Ambazonian Activist in Cameroon Claims Bakassi Peninsula Is Separate State.  The Ambazonia People’s Congress (A.P.C.) has asked the national legislature to revisit the 2006 international agreement under which the Bakassi Peninsula was transferred from Nigeria to Cameroon.  The group’s head, Fon Gorji-Dinka, claims that the Bakassi region is technically a part of neither Nigeria nor Cameroon but in fact an independent state.  See this blog’s full article on this subject, with background and commentary.

Defendant in 1999 Caprivi Strip Uprising Acquitted by Namibia Court.  A leader in a failed bid to separate the Caprivi Strip from the Republic of Namibia was acquitted of all charges August 17th in a surprise decision by a court in Grootfontein in the nine-year-long trial (whose defense rested in February of this year, as reported in this blog).  The defendant, Rodwell Kasika Mukendwa, was one of 112 men facing treason, murder, or various other charges for a 1999 uprising by the Caprivi Liberation Army in which at least 11 people died.  There were two chief witnesses against Mukendwa, but one died and another reconsidered his cooperation, so there was not enough evidence to convict him.  The Caprivi Strip, also known as Itenge, is part of the homeland of the Lozi (a.k.a. Barotse) people that also includes the Barotseland region of neighboring Zambia, which has its own separatist movement.

8 More Boeremag Plotters Convicted of Treason for 2002 South African Coup Plot.  Eight more treason convictions were handed down in a Pretoria, South Africa, court on August 14th and 15th for members of the white-supremacist militia Boeremag, whose members plotted in 2002 to assassinate Nelson Mandela, overthrow the South African government, and instigate ethnic cleansing in what they called “Operation Popeye.”  The 12th and 13th convictions—out of 20 defendants total—are Dr. Lets Pretorius and Jurie Vermeulen.  Pretorius was the militia’s “medical commander.”  Then, on the 15th, Herman van Rooyen, a farmer from Bela Bela who was the Boeremag’s Limpopo commander and bomb expert, and Gerhardus Visagie, the group’s chaplain, were both convicted of high treason.  Visagie was convicted in absentia, since he is recovering from a back injury and from a heart attack that followed an escape attempt in a courtroom last year.  Then, on August 16th, treason convictions were delivered to Johan Pretorius, a physician; Johan’s brother Wilhelm Pretorius; Rudi Gouws; and Jacques Jordaan, a computer programmer.  The one remaining defendant, Kobus Pretorius, will hear his verdict on August 20th.

Missing Killing Joke Singer Jaz Coleman Alive & Well in Western Sahara—Maybe.  The lead singer of the British post-punk industrial rock band Killing Joke, Jaz Coleman, who went missing two weeks ago, disrupting plans for a tour with the Cult and the Mission, is reportedly “alive and kicking” in Western Sahara.  According to the band’s Facebook page, Coleman “appeared today from his retreat in the Western Sahara, bemused by all the fuss of his disappearance.”  Coleman, who is of part Bengali ancestry and was raised in England, reports that he is “living a nomadic existence” and working on three projects—a solo album, a television show, and a new book.  There has been no independent confirmation of his whereabouts, however, and Western Sahara—most of which is under brutal occupation by the Kingdom of Morocco and a sliver of which is held by rebels as an unrecognized Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic—is an unlikely place for someone of any means to choose as a quiet retreat.  [Related article: “10 Ethnonationalist Causes That Might Disrupt the Olympics” (July 2012).]

Jaz Coleman, former rock star, current Western Sahara nomad

EUROPE

Over 200 Basques on Hunger Strike in Spanish, French Prisons.  In Spain, 108 prisoners from the disarmed and mostly disbanded Basque separatist army ETA (Euskadi Ta Atanuskana, or Basque Homeland and Freedom) are on hunger strike, prison officials announced August 13th, and by the next day Herrira, the ETA prisoners’ advocacy group, said that 91 Basque prisoners in 23 different prisons in France had joined them.  The figure has now been put at over 200.  They are protesting the continued imprisonment of Jesús María Uribetxebarria Bolinaga, who is also on hunger strike.  Bolinaga is undergoing cancer treatment while imprisoned for murders and kidnappings in the pursuit of a separate Basque republic.  The Spanish government has said it will not negotiate the question with the hunger-strikers.  [Related article: “The World’s 21 Sexiest Separatists,” featuring a profile of the Basque warrior Idoia López Riaño, a.k.a. la Tigresa.]

Sardinian Separatist Arrested for Tax Fraud.  On Sardinia, the vast Italian island in the Mediterranean which has shifted hands over the centuries and is at least as close culturally to Spain and Catalonia as to Italy, a separatist leader was arrested August 18th on charges of tax fraud.  The leader, Salvatore (a.k.a. Doddore) Meloni, was best known for founding, in 2008, a brief-lived micronation called the Republic of Malu Entu on the island of Mal di Ventre off the western coast of Sardinia.

Beating and Bombings Reported in Disputed North Kosovo.  Two ethnic Albanians were assaulted and severely beaten by at least eight Serbs on August 13th in the sliver of the Republic of Kosovo bordering Serbia proper, which Serbs dominate and run as a quasi-autonomous North Kosovo.  The same day, nearby in Mitrovica, the de facto capital of the disputed region, a government car was destroyed by a bomb, and the following day unknown assailants threw a hand-grenade at a tavern and cafeteria in the same town.  Most western European countries recognize Kosovo, whose majority ethnicity is Albanian, as independent, but the territory is still claimed by the Republic of Serbia.  [Related articles: “Balkan Semantics: How Kosovo Dropped Two Words and Serbia Gained Europe” (March 2012), “10 Ethnonationalist Causes That Might Disrupt the Olympics” (July 2012).]

North Kosovo

Ukraine to Extradite Chechen and Kazakh to Russia in Fishy “Assassination Plot.”  A court in Odessa, Ukraine, ruled this week that two suspects held on charges of plotting to assassinate Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, in February (reported at the time in this blog), in what still smells like a Kremlin frame-up, will be extradited to Russia.  The court ruled on August 14th for the extradition of Adam Osmayev, an ethnically Chechen citizen of Russia, and the following day for that of Ilya Pyanzin, a citizen of Kazakhstan.  Just before elections in which Putin ended up reelected (Putin’s would-be assassins always seem to get caught just in time to help Putin’s image when it is most needed), two militants linked to the Islamist separatist Caucasus Emirate movement, which operates in Chechnya and elsewhere, were arrested in Odessa on suspicion of planning to plant bombs along one of Putin’s Moscow motorcade routes.  Pyanzin was arrested after an explosion in an apparent bomb-making laboratory in his Odessa apartment killed an accomplice.  That led police to Osmayev.  Both men told police they were in the pay of Doku Umarov (nom de guerre: Dokku Abu Usman), grand emir of the violent Caucasus Emirate movement and that they had also plotted the assassination of Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya’s Moscow-appointed authoritarian president.

7 Suspects Released as Search for Mufti’s Killers Continues in Tatarstan.  In the Republic of Tatarstan, in central Russia, seven suspects in the July 19th assassination (reported in this blog at the time) of one of the republic’s leading muftis and the attempted killing of another were released, it was reported this week.  One remains in custody.  The seven who were released are still on call for court summonses.  The search is still on for three other suspects, who are at large.  The Mujahideen of Tatarstan, a shadowy group linked to the Islamist separatist Caucasus Emirate movement, has taken responsibility for the attacks (as reported in this blog), which targeted clerics critical of radical Islam.  [Related article: “That Creepy Underground Islamic Cult in Tatarstan? Turns Out It’s Just a Split-Level—and the Kids Were Fine.”]

4 Die as Bombs and Drive-by Shootings Target Police in Dagestan.  A car bomb exploded in the Russian Federation’s Republic of Dagestan, in the North Caucasus, on August 14th, killing one policeman.  The blast occurred in Buinaksk.  The policeman died in a hospital from injuries sustained in the attack.  On the same day, a drive-by shooting in Khasavyurt, in Dagestan, killed two traffic police.  One of the attackers was killed in the ensuing shoot-out.  In the adjacent Russian republic, Ingushetia, militants attacked a restaurant in Nazran with a grenade-launcher on August 15th, causing a fire but no casualties.

Anti-Semitic Head of Hungarian Far-Right Party, Revealed to Be Jewish, Resigns.  In one of the most delicious developments in recent memory, Csanád Szegedi, a member of the European Parliament (M.E.P.) and leader of Hungary’s leading ultranationalist anti-Semitic political party, called Jobbik—the Movement for a Better Hungary, resigned his party posts on July 28th in the wake of revelations that he was himself Jewish.  The Internet rumors had been flying for a while, but in June a 2010 tape-recording surfaced in which Szegedi tried to bribe into silence a convicted felon who confronted him with the truth of his background.  Now Jobbik—which accepts the veracity of the tape-recording, though Szegedi rejects it on unspecified grounds—would like him to resign his parliamentary post as well.  Party leaders claim this is because of the bribery, not because Szegedi is a Jew; the bribes he is recorded offering include European Union (E.U.) funds and an E.U. job.  Jobbik is one of the few openly anti-Semitic parties in Europe—though there are far-right parties in every European country that employ anti-Semitic subtexts.  Szegedi once referred to Israelis as “lice-infested, dirty murderers,” and in 2007 he co-founded the Hungarian Guard, a neo-Nazi-style militia later banned by the Hungarian government.  Now, it is known that not only that Szegedi’s mother’s parents were Orthodox Jews, but that his grandmother, who is still living, is an Auschwitz and Dachau survivor whose entire extended family was exterminated by the Nazis.  Szegedi, for his part, has said that, even so, he considers himself “100% Hungarian” but with Jewish ancestry, rather than as “Jewish” per se.  Toying with such nuanced ways of defining one’s ethnic identity, alas, was not an option for the nearly half-million Jews Hungary’s Axis government rounded up and shipped to Auschwitz during the Nazi era.  [Related article: “Transylvanian Separatism Haunts Romania, This Time via YouTube” (Aug. 2012).]

Csanád Szegedi

Nude Pro–Pussy Riot Activist Chainsaws Kiev Memorial Cross for Stalin’s Victims.  Activists from the Ukrainian guerilla-theater feminist collective Femen, who have been vocal in support of the Russia’s anti–Vladimir Putin punk band Pussy Riot in their trial on hooliganism charges in Moscow, staged a controversial demonstration in Kiev, Ukraine, shortly before the announcement of the verdict.  Inna Shevchenko, a Femen member, on August 17th, cut down with a chainsaw a giant cross erected in 2005 as a memorial to Ukrainian victims of the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.  Ukrainians across the political spectrum, including especially groups representing survivors of Stalin’s genocidal rule, expressed indignation.  Though Femen’s distaste for organized religion is well known (see a report, with photo!, in this blog on a protest action against the Russian Orthodox patriarch last month), the choice of this particular cross as a target is odd for an action meant to criticized Moscow’s authoritarianism.  But never mind, at least it gives this blog an excuse to include more pictures of bare-breasted women.  [Related article: “Olympic Update: Femen Protest, Bigoted Judokas, Sudanese Defectors” (Aug. 2012).]

Inna Shevchenko.  A few minutes later, this cross was down.

Militant Transylvanian Separatist Web Video Panics Romanian Government.  The interior minister of the Republic of Romania, Mircea Duşa, expressed worry this week that a new video that surfaced online advocating the violent secession of Transylvania is a matter of concern that should be discussed at high levels.  In the video, a marksmanship training camp is shown with the words, “We are from the Székely-Hungarian National Guard, designed to liberate Transylvania from Romanian occupation.”  (Watch the video here.)  See my full article on the subject for details, historical background, and commentary.

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

[For a full update on Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Kurdistan, see “Kurdistan Update: Both Turks & PKK Claim to Control Şemdinli, Zaza MP Abducted, Donna D’Errico and Noah’s Ark” (Aug. 18, 2012).]

Gorno-Badakhshan Warlord Surrenders to Tajik Military.  Government forces in the Republic of Tajikistan scored a victory when the rebel leader Tolib Ayombekov surrendered to central-government forces on August 12th and urged his fellow warriors to lay down their weapons as well.  Ayombekov surrendered in Khorugh, capital of Tajikistan’s Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (G.B.A.O.), which forms almost the entire eastern half of the mountainous country.  The current conflict began July 21st (as reported at the time in this blog) with the beating death, in Gorno-Badakhshan, of the chief of Tajikistan’s secret police, prompting, three days later, a massive military offensive to round up the Pamir rebels the central government deemed responsible.  The death toll in that operation, officially 20, may actually be more like 100.  Ayombekov led a Pamir separatist insurgency in the early 1990s, after Tajikistan was freed from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.), but a peace deal integrated him into the Tajik military structure—though with strong evidence that he continued to run his own militias and smuggling operations.  Now Tajik forces are reportedly beginning to withdraw from Gorno-Badakhshan, but as recently as August 11th there had been anti-government demonstrations there after civilians were killed at a military checkpoint.  Ayombekov is in the hospital and awaiting trial.

South Ossetia to Tie Up Loose Ends of Ethnic Cleansing, Erase Deserted Georgian Villages.  The president of the largely unrecognized Republic of South Ossetia, Leonid Tibilov, has announced plans to demolish what is left of some ethnically Georgian villages in the republic which were abandoned during the ethnic cleansing during and after the brief 2008 war in which the Russian Federation secured the de facto independence of the territory from the Republic of Georgia.  Even the names will be erased from maps.  “We’ll build some new residential buildings here, too,” Tibilov said, “but the former villages will be completely removed, therefore there is no need to keep the names.”  [Related article: “South Ossetia Update: ‘Independent’ Elections in an ‘Independent’ State—Russian Style” (Dec. 2011).]

Abkhaz Police Kill Alleged “Georgian Saboteur.”  Near Primorsk, in the de facto independent Republic of Abkhazia, police clashed with fighters that the authorities called “Georgian saboteurs” on August 13th, killing one of the Georgians.  Abkhazia, along with South Ossetia, seceded from the Republic of Georgia after the fall of Communism, and the two consolidated their still-largely-unrecognized independence in 2008 in a brief war between the Russian Federation and Georgia.  Three local residents were also arrested in connection with the incident.  Authorities also reported in this connection the kidnapping of a nine-year-old boy in a predominantly Georgian-populated region of Abkhazi, the Gali district, two days later.

ASIA—MIDDLE EAST

[For a full update on Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Kurdistan, see “Kurdistan Update: Both Turks & PKK Claim to Control Şemdinli, Zaza MP Abducted, Donna D’Errico and Noah’s Ark” (Aug. 18, 2012).]

10 Dead, 20 Arrested amid Crackdown, Attacks in Egypt’s Sinai.  The Egyptian military continued its crackdown on Islamist militias in the Sinai peninsula this week in the wake of a deadly attack on a border post August 5th at the three-way border between Egypt, Israel, and the Palestinian Territories’ Gaza Strip, in which 16 Egyptian border guards were killed (as reported last week in this blog).  An army rocket attack on the home of a suspected terrorist in al-Goura village in the north Sinai on August 12th killed seven people and injured one.  The same day, United Nations peacekeeping troops and Egyptian military checkpoints were attacked by gunmen, and three Egyptians died in a car chase.  Authorities have arrested nine Egyptians and 11 Palestinians in the Sinai, according to authorities on August 11th, all suspected of terrorism.  The Palestinians had apparently entered Egypt from Gaza through the system of tunnels running beneath the border but could not return because Egyptian authorities had closed them.  [Related article: “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012.”]

Egypt cracks down in the Sinai

Palestinian Taxi Firebombed in West Bank; 6 Hurt.  Unidentified assailants presumed to be Jewish extremists threw a Molotov cocktail at a Palestinian-operated taxi cab in broad daylight just outside a Jewish settlement in the West Bank on August 16th, injuring six, including two children.  When hit by the firebomb, the taxi flipped and burst into flames.  The search for the perpetrators is ongoing.  [Related article: “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012.”]

Demonstrations, Extremist Rhetoric Mark Palestinians’ al-Quds Day.  On the last Friday of Ramadan, August 17th, known as al-Quds Day in the Palestinian Territories, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to protest Israel’s ongoing blockade of the territories, its building of new illegal settlements on the West Bank, and its obstruction of Palestine’s status as a fully recognized state.  Al-Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem—Islam’s third-holiest city, which was originally designated as an international zone in 1949 but was subsequently conquered by Israel and made its capital.  Supporters of Palestinian rights throughout the Middle East held events to mark the day.  Hezbollah, the Shiite Arab militia in Lebanon currently embroiled in sectarian warfare spilling over from Syria’s civil war, threatened to kill thousands of Israelis if Israel attacked Lebanon again as it did in 2006, and Iran’s unhinged, genocidally-minded president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, promised celebrants in Tehran “a new Middle East” with “no trace of Americans or Israelis.”  [Related article: “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012.”]

Israeli Soldier Who Gunned Down Gaza Civilians in Hamas War Let off Hook.  An Israeli army sniper was cleared August 12th of manslaughter charges in his trial for gunning down two female Palestinian civilians during the 2008-09 war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.  The defendant, known only as “Sergeant S,” shot a 64-year-old woman and her 37-year-old daughter as they left a house waving a white flag.  Sgt. S will do 45 days in jail on an unrelated weapons charge, as part of the plea deal that saved him a manslaughter conviction.  In the winter of 2008-09, Israel launched a brutal war against Hamas, in retaliation for repeated rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. The Israeli response included helicopter-gunship airstrikes on civilian areas.  Hundreds of innocent Palestinian civilians were killed.  Sgt. S’s charges were the only ones brought against any serviceperson for any of the killings of civilians in the war.  Getting a prosecution against anyone wearing a military uniform murdering civilians is tough enough in any country in the best of times; in Israel under Benjamin Netanyahu, it must be well-nigh impossible.  [Related article: “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012.”]

Palestinian Suicide-Bomb Accomplice Sneaks Semen out of Israeli Prison, Becomes Dad.  Ammar Ziben, a 32-year-old Palestinian from Nablus, in the West Bank, is serving 32 life terms for helping Hamas carry out suicide-bombings in a Jerusalem market in 1997.  He has been in prison since 1999, but on August 13th he became the father of a baby boy Muhannad, born to his wife Dallal Ziben, even though Israel does not allow Palestinian prisoners conjugal visits.  The boy was born through artificial insemination (and also a sperm gender-separation procedure; Arab culture heavily favors sons).  It is not clear how the semen was smuggled out of the prison.  Whether inmates are allowed to meet with relatives through a chain-link fence rather than plexiglass, and whether Dallal was accustomed to merely mumbling or humming “goodbye” to guards as she left the building on prison visits would seem to be questions that could help get to the bottom of this.  Also, perhaps now prison staff will spend as much time inspecting the frosting on cakes going out of the prison as looking for metal files in the cakes that go in.  [Related article: “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012.”]

South Yemen Separatist Leader Arrested at Aden Airport.  Authorities in the Republic of Yemen—at least one can hope it was the authorities—arrested a southern secessionist leader as he stepped off a flight from the United Kingdom in Aden, former capital of South Yemen, on August 15th.  A fellow separatist waiting to greet him said that the leader, Ahmed Abdullah al-Hassani, was snagged by “a group of armed men” who boarded the plane, then “took him and disappeared.”  Yemen in South Yemen reunified in 1990 with the fall of Communism, but the Arab Spring revolts have revived the southern separatist movement.  [Related article: “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012.”]

ASIA—SOUTH ASIA

TV Exec’s Brother Nabbed by Pakistan Secret Police over Ties to Baloch Rebels.  Secret police in Pakistan have abducted the brother of a prominent television producer, Razzak Sarbazi, in what observers can only imagine is retaliation for a recent telephone interview Sarbazi conducted with Dr. Allah Nazar, who is linked to the Baloch Liberation Front (B.L.F.).  The brother, Abdul Jalil, and a friend, Abdul Saboor, were, according to statements Sarbazi made to the press on August 13th, nabbed two days earlier by men in a police car at the Karachi zoo.  Sarbazi suspects the two men are in the custody of Pakistan’s shadowy Special Investigation Unit (S.I.U.).  A suicide-bombing at a checkpoint near Quetta, in northern Balochistan, killed five security officers, but it was as yet unclear of Baloch separatists were responsible.  Meanwhile, the Baloch Liberation Army (B.L.A.) is being named as a suspect in the planting of a bomb defused on August 13th by authorities near a mall in a suburb of Karachi, capital of the neighboring Pakistani province of Sindh.  [Related article: “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012.”]

Over 30,000 Assamese Stampede out of South Indian Cities, Fearing Violence.  The recent and ongoing sectarian and communal strife in India’s far-northeastern Assam state (reported recently in this blog) spilled over in an unexpected way into the far south of the country, as thousands of residents of Bangalore, in Karnataka, and Hyderabad, in Andhra Pradesh, fled the city August 15th and 16th in the face of rumors that Indians from the northeast who are living there would be the targets of violence—violence by Muslims, in most versions of the rumors.  6,800 Karnatakans of Assamese and other northeastern ancestry jammed onto trains to leave the city on the 15th, reaching a total of 30,000 that had left by August 18th, while nearly half of Hyderabad’s 1,700 or so Assamese fled that city within the space of a few days.  Chennai and Pune were also each reporting a mass exodus.  Police have stepped up patrols to reassure the population, and Karnataka’s chief minister, Jagadish Shettar, announced, “The entire government is with you.  We will protect the interests of the northeast people.”  The best thinking is that some “stray incidents,” as Shettar put it, against Assamese residents snowballed into more frightening rumors.  The state’s home minister also threatened legal action against those spreading rumors knowingly.  Meanwhile, in Assam itself, violence ground on this week as attackers threw acid on a rickshaw carrying an ethnic-minority family in Kokrajhar district, injuring nine, on August 16th, while in Kamrup vehicles were burned and elsewhere a bus was set on fire and a wooden bridge destroyed by arson by a mob.  Police are in full force in Assam and using tear gas to control mobs, but things are expected to get more tense when the trains teeming with Assamese arrive from Bangalore and Hyderabad.  Talk about out of the nonexistent frying pan into the actual fire.

Let’s get the fuck out of Bangalore before the shit hits the fan!

Kashmiri Politician Says Hindu Nationalists Crawling in Bed with Separatists.  The political advisor to the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, the Republic of India’s only majority-Muslim state, lashed out August 11th at the right-wing Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (B.J.P.), India’s second-largest party, which he accuses of making cynical common cause with a spectrum of anti-status-quo Kashmiri parties, ranging from separatists to the more mainstream Jammu and Kashmir People’s Democratic Party (P.D.P.).  The advisor, Devender Singh Rana, called it an opportunistic ploy to seize power from the Indian National Congress party nationally and, in Kashmir, from Rana’s own moderately autonomist Jammu and Kashmir National Conference Party.  Rana said the B.J.P.’s senior leader, Ram Jethmalani, had recently met with representatives of Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, the P.D.P.’s leader, in Srinagar, Kashmir’s capital, in pursuit of the coalition.

Bangladesh Nabs Madrasa Teacher Said to Be Recruiting Rohingyas to Kashmir Cause.  In Bangladesh, police on August 16th arrested a man said to be a member of a Kashmiri separatist militia in the country to recruit Rohingyas to carry out terrorist operations in Bangladesh.  The man, Moulana Mohammad Yunus, a 48-year-old madrasa teacher, was arrested in Dakka, Bangladesh’s capital, on a tip.  Yunus is said to be one of the “top-most leaders” in the Bangladeshi chapter of Jaish-e-Mohammed, a radical Islamist Kashmiri separatist group which operates mainly in the Indian-governed part of Kashmir.

ASIA—EAST ASIA

Burmese Parties Demand Removal of U.N. Envoy Probing Rohingya Abuses.  Members of 24 different political parties in Burma (a.k.a. Myanmar) met with a United Nations (U.N.) envoy August 10th demanding the removal of Tomás Ojea Quintana, the U.N. Human Rights Commission rapporteur assigned to investigate the ongoing plight of western Burma’s disenfranchised and predominantly-Muslim Rohingya people.  Quintana, who visited Burma’s Arakan (a.k.a. Rakhine) state last week (as reported in this blog), called for new probes into the situation, having concluded that human-rights abuses against Rohingyas “include the excessive use of force by security and police personnel, arbitrary arrest and detention, killings, the denial of due process guarantees, and the use of torture in places of detention.”  The parties called his conclusion biased toward the Rohingya—who bore the brunt, in June, of a deadly cycle of reprisals with local members of Burma’s Buddhist majority.  Meanwhile, officials in Burma reported August 11th a fresh round of violence in Arakan, with 13 killed and the burning down of 300 houses and a rice mill.  [Related article: “The Moment Burma’s Ethnic Minorities Have Been Waiting for” (Jan. 2012).]

U.N. in Burma Can’t Reach 65,000 Displaced Kachin Who Need Aid.  The United Nations (U.N.) said this week that more than a third of the 65,000 or so members of Burma’s Kachin minority nationality who are internally displaced and in need of relief aid cannot be reached.  The statement was made by Aye Win, the U.N.’s main information officer for Burma (a.k.a. Myanmar), who blamed Burma’s military, which has been at war with the Kachin for decades, for the obstruction.  The U.N. has also asked the Burmese government to allow aid workers greater access to Arakan (a.k.a. Rakhine) State, in the west, home of the disenfranchised Rohingya minority.  Meanwhile, there were reports that, in Kachin State’s Mohnyin district on August 11th, Burmese soldiers gang-raped the 14-year-old daughter of a village chief from the Shan nationality, another ethnic group that has been at war with the Burmese government for decades.  [Related article: “The Moment Burma’s Ethnic Minorities Have Been Waiting for” (Jan. 2012).]
NORTH AMERICA

Parti Québécois Promises to Toughen French Language Laws If Elected.  The leader of the separatist Parti Québécois (P.Q.), Pauline Marois, promised a crowd in Montreal August 12th that, if elected in September, she would toughen Quebec’s laws limiting the use of English.  Currently, firms with more than 50 employees must conduct business in French.  Marois wants to lower than number to 10, as well to strengthen the position of workers who want to conduct work in their native French and require immigrants in Quebec to attend francophone junior colleges, rather than allowing them to choose a language of instruction.  The P.Q. is currently leading in the polls against the currently governing Liberal Party of Quebec.  [Related article: “Quebec Cracks Down on Crimes against the State—Like Playing Hopscotch in English” (Nov. 2012).]

Pauline Marois promises to crack down on Anglophones

Missouri National Guardsman Gave Neo-Nazis Paramilitary Training, Trial Reveals.  In Florida, court documents unsealed as part of the ongoing trial of members of the white supremacist militia called American Front revealed this week that, according to the testimony of an unnamed member of the Missouri National Guard, he provided training to American Front members who were preparing for what they believed to be a coming race war in the United States.  In 2011, the guardsmen traveled to Florida and trained members in assault rifle skills and hand-to-hand combat, for which he was “patched”—militia jargon for being given a patch as a token of initiation into the group.  The ex-guardsman testified that he had become involved in a movement to “protect the White race” while on a tour of service in Iraq in 2008.  He now considers himself a “lone-wolf skinhead,” not affiliated with a particular militia.  He is the second Missouri guardsman outed as a white-supremacist.  The other, in March, was removed from an honor guard that performed at military funerals after his neo-Nazi ties became known.  Unlike the first, the unnamed, second guardsman is cooperating with the Florida investigation to avoid charges.  [Related article: “Vast Arsenal Returned to Exonerated Hutaree Militiaman in Indiana” (July 2012).]

Scottish Separatist Charged in Pennsylvania for Campus Bomb Threats.  In Pennsylvania, in the United States, a 64-year-old activist for the independence of Scotland was charged with emailing bomb threats that terrorized the University of Pittsburgh in March and April of this year, resulting in 100 evacuations on campus.  The defendant, Adam Stuart Busby, age 64, who is currently in jail in Dublin, Ireland, sent the emails using computer servers in the Netherlands and Austria.  He promised to end the bomb threats if the university chancellor, Mark Nordenberg, withdrew a $50,000 reward for information leading to the bomber.  Later, in June, he made bomb threats against courthouses in Erie and Johnstown, Pennsylvania.  Busby is a member of the Scottish National Liberation Army, which is a banned militant group in the United Kingdom.  He has no actual connection with the university.  It was not immediately how or when Busby would be brought to Pennyslvania to face the charges.  [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).]

Didn’t anybody tell this moron that there’s already a referendum scheduled?

Los Angeles Neighborhood Wishes to Join Culver City.  A group of residents in the small Southern Mar Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, is accelerating a new push to leave the City of Los Angeles and join Culver City.  Their motivations include taxes and the differences in the quality of the infrastructure between the two municipalities.  Culver City, nicknamed “the Heart of Screenland,” is almost entirely surrounded by Los Angeles.  At five square miles, it mainly owes its existence to M-G-M Studios, which is based there.  Meanwhile, the Holmby Hills neighborhood of western Los Angeles is threatening to join the much more prosperous City of Beverly Hills.

Redrawing some Los Angeles boundaries

Megadeth Guitarist Says Obama Staged Sikh, Colorado Massacres to Push Gun Control.  Who says artists tend to be liberal, or even that they tend to be smart?  We have reported on this blog in the past about Sean Penn’s pinheaded opinions on the Falkland Islands dispute and Ted Nugent’s Cro-Magnon conservatism.  Now Dave Mustaine, lead guitarist and lead singer of the heavy-metal band Megadeth, said this week that the United States president, Barack Obama, staged the July 20th movie-theater massacre in Colorado and the August 5th mass shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin (reported on at the time in this blog) in order to advance gun-control legislation.  “Back in my country,” he told the audience during a concert in Singapore, “my president, he’s trying to pass a gun ban, so he’s staging all of these murders, like ... Aurora, Colorado, all the people that were killed there, and now the beautiful people at the Sikh temple.  I don’t know where I’m gonna live if America keeps going the way it’s going because it looks like it’s turning into Nazi America.”  In the actual, real world in which most of us live, the Republican Party has won the gun-control battle for the foreseeable future, and no Democrat dares suggest, even as innocents are gunned down by maniacs daily, that any gun controls be implemented—though far-right paranoid folklore tends to maintain otherwise.  Mustaine’s love for the “beautiful” Sikh people is, I suppose, commendable, given that in 1988 he told an interviewer, “It makes me sick to think we have assholes in this country letting fucking Mexicans in.”  Mustaine, who was raised a Jehovah’s Witness, now calls himself a born-again Christian.  He supported the loathsome and repellent Rick Santorum, the openly bigoted, paleo-Catholic theocrat from Pennsylvania, for the Republican nomination earlier this year.

Dave Mustaine—even stupider than he looks

[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.]