“Captain Moroni” and “Y’all-Qaeda”: Why the Armed Standoff in Oregon Is Being Mishandled—or, Rather, Not Handled at All

Back in spring of 2014, I wrote in this space about the armed confrontation in southern Nevada led by the extremist Mormon rancher Cliven Bundy.  He was in serious arrears for grazing fees on federal land and hit upon the idea that he didn’t have to pay them at all because his family had become owners of the land through “pre-emptive rights and beneficial use” (similar, ironically, to arguments used by radical leftists against absentee landlords in Latin American land-reform movements).  Federal agents arrived to confiscate his cattle in accordance with the law, but he and hundreds of armed supporters, including snipers and wielders of automatic weapons, stood their ground until finally the feds backed off.  Bundy never did have to pay those grazing fees.  I warned at the time that this would embolden future libertarian and anti-government militants.  And just last week I opined in my annual round-up article “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2016” that the rise of the Republican Party’s far-right extremist frontrunner for the presidential nomination, Donald Trump, would further inspire anti-government demonstrations and siege situations.  I was not pessimistic enough to think that I would be proven correct so soon, but events in Oregon this week have brought not just anti-government militancy, but the Bundy family in particular, back into the news.

Cliven Bundy in Nevada in 2014

On January 2nd, a group of armed militiamen led by three of Bundy’s fourteen (!) children took over a complex of administrative buildings on the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Oregon, near the town of Burns.  The events began with the imprisonment of two Oregon ranchers, Dwight and Steve Hammond, charged with arson on federal lands that are administered by the United States federal government’s Bureau of Land Management (B.L.M.).  The Hammonds and their supporters claimed to be managing invasive plants with the burns; others say they set fires to destroy evidence of their illegal poaching; but no one disputes that they broke the law, and, as laws go, arson is a serious one.  The charges against them came under anti-terrorism provisions as well, since the Hammonds had repeatedly threatened authorities with violence.

The Bundy family took up the Hammonds’ cause and publicized it among the vast network of local right-wing extremist militias that have proliferated over the past several decades in rural America, but especially whenever Democrats are in the White House.  Last month they organized a “Committee of Safety” (using language from the American Revolution), which they proclaimed as a “a governmental body established by the people in the absence of the ability of the existing government to provide for the needs and protection of civilized society.”

Some Three-Percenters with their flag (not a scene from this week’s standoff)

Ammon and Ryan Bundy, accompanied by members of the anti-government “Three-Percenters” militia (including Jon Ritzheimer, a celebrity in the militia world who rails against Muslims and had been kicked out of the Oath Keepers hate group in Arizona), took over several buildings on the wildlife preserve and set up roadblocks.  The occupiers of the buildings, calling themselves Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, claimed initially they numbered 150 people, later revised to 20 or 25, but that has not been confirmed.  There are possibly “no more than a dozen” of them, according to one reporter.

Ammon and Ryan Bundy

It is also unclear what role the Bundy family’s conservative Mormonism may play in the ideological stew of white supremacism, anarcho-libertarianism, firearms fetishism, and good-ol’-boy frontier mentality that informs this mini-movement.  One activist in the occupied building who spoke to the media identified himself only as “Captain Moroni, from Utah.”  Some observers think that this nom de guerre is a “dogwhistle” directed at Mormons who will recognize the reference to the figure of the same name in the Book of Mormon who rallied the Nephites (a fictional ancient tribe, supposedly a remnant of the Lost Tribes of Israel who migrated to the New World) against the corrupt King Amalickiah under a flag called the “Title of Liberty.”  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has already issued a statement saying that “this armed occupation can in no way be justified on a scriptural basis.”  But what else would they say?  And even Cliven Bundy told media that the current occupation is “not exactly what I thought should happen.”

Captain Moroni with the Title of Liberty flag, from an L.D.S. illustration

The standoff is ongoing, and it is clearly about more than just the Hammonds (who began their sentence yesterday in a Los Angeles prison).  Ammon Bundy says the protesters will not leave until “the federal government ... give[s] up its unconstitutional presence in this county.”  They also point out that they are against the whole idea of federal wildlife refuges.  In the words of David M. Ward, sheriff of Harney County, where the standoff is occurring, “These men came to Harney County claiming to be part of militia groups supporting local ranchers, when in reality these men had alternative motives, to attempt to overthrow the county and federal government in hopes to spark a movement across the United States.”

A scene from the 2014 Nevada standoff.  Note t-shirt with “baker’s apostrophe.”

In fact, “standoff” is hardly an appropriate word for the situation, since there is no visible physical response by law enforcement to the occupation whatsoever.  It is not clear who, if anyone, and at what level, is issuing “stand down” orders, but authorities are giving the occupied buildings a very wide berth, despite state police command centers far away in Burns and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s claims that they are on the case.

A special Oregon version of the Gadsden (“Don’t Tread on Me”) flag
on display in Harney County this week

Given how heavily armed the occupiers are, this is quite astonishing, and more than one observer has pointed out that if, say, radical Muslims or Black nationalists were occupying those buildings, all of Harney County would be a glowing crater by now.  When the Black nationalist organization MOVE was involved in a similar standoff in Philadelphia in 1985, the city government bombed the neighborhood, destroying 65 homes and killing eleven people, including five children.  When anti-government members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) set up an armed encampment at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1973, President Richard Nixon sent in the army—the only time the U.S. military has been deployed against U.S. citizens on U.S. territory since the Civil War.  Some also wonder why the media is so hesitant to call the Citizens for Constitutional Freedom (dubbed by social-media wags as “Y’all-Qaeda” or “Vanilla ISIS” and as “yee-haw-dists”) a terrorist group, and wonder if the term terrorist, as it is actually used, has more to do with people’s skin color or religion than with how armed and dangerous they are.

Philadelphia, 1985: what happens to armed protest encampments if you’re black

The White House said yesterday that President Barack Obama was monitoring the situation and that “this is a local law enforcement matter.”  In fact, that statement is not correct.  Crimes committed on federal property are a federal matter, but the federal government has decided not to enforce the law itself—just as it declined to do a year and half ago at Bundy’s ranch in Nevada.  As Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center (S.P.L.C.), an organization which monitors militias and hate groups, put it, the Bundys in 2014 “were emboldened by their ability to run federal officials off at the point of a gun.  Now, a year and half later, there have been no prosecutions whatsoever.  Pointing a gun at a federal officer is a crime.”  Clearly, the Obama administration fears a confrontation that could spin out of control, like the ones at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1993 (three dead) and at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, in 1994 (86 dead, including children).  Those events became recruiting bonanzas for the increasingly widespread and angry right-wing militia movement across the U.S.

The Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, in 1994

Certainly, it is true that leaving the occupiers alone, not allowing anyone else in, and waiting for them to run out of food and surrender is among the more peaceful ways to end the conflict.  If nothing else, there aren’t even any police visible to shoot at.

Is that a Nazi salute, or is he just showing people where the port-a-potties are?

On the other hand, the message the authorities are sending militias is that they have more or less free rein to take over federal facilities without opposition.  Believe me, they will take us up that invitation.

[Thanks to Jeremy Appleton and Anna Reynolds for alerting me to sources consulted for this article.]

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

Boko Haram’s Nascent State in Nigeria Takes Shape, with Vast Parts of Borno, Adamawa under Islamist Control

As reported in August in this blog, Boko Haram, the extremist Islamist terrorist group in Nigeria which has been waging a lethal war against Christian (and other) civilians for years, took a page from the Islamic State (I.S.) and al-Qaeda playbook and declared a separate Islamic “caliphate” in northern Nigeria.  But now the contours of that nascent state are coming into sharper focus.  Last week, Boko Haram renamed Mubi, a city of over 100,000 people in Adamawa State, near the border with Cameroon, which the group had recently taken control of.  It is now, they say, “Madinatul Islam,” which means “City of Islam,” and presumably it is the capital of this kernel of a new Islamic nation.

The city of Mubi after Boko Haram paid it a visit about a year ago.  Now it controls it completely.

Boko Haram, according to news reports, controls four of Adamawa’s twelve local government areas (L.G.A.s)—as subdivisions of Nigerian states are called.  These L.G.A.s are all adjacent and bunched in the northern tip of Adamawa.  They are Madagali, Michika, Mubi North, and Mubi South—including, of course, the city of Mubi.  Boko Haram roadblocks and checkpoints have been set up along the borders of the quasi-statelet, and the Nigerian government and military have no presence there.  The group has announced its aim to take over all of Adamawa, a state of nearly 4 million people roughly the size of Maryland or Taiwan.

In this map, Borno State local government areas
controlled by Boko Haram are circled in red.

Already, Boko Haram was reported to control an astounding one-third of the twenty-four L.G.A.s in Borno State.  Borno is the much larger and more populous state to the north of Adamawa where Nigeria, Chad, Niger, and Cameroon meet at Lake Chad.  It is here, in late August, that Boko Haram declared the city of Gwoza, which it had captured, to be the kernel of the new caliphate.  It also at that time already controlled Gulak, in the current northern-Adamawa statelet, and a string of towns spilling across southern Borno into Yobe State as well.  Borno, with over 5 million people, is about the size of Ireland.  In addition to Gwoza, then, Boko Haram now also controls the Borno L.G.A.s of Gamboru-Ngala, Kala-Balge, Marte, Dikwa, Bama, and Askira-Uba, as well as part of Konduga (see map above).  Observers expect the group to make a grab soon for Maiduguri, the Borno capital, which has over 1 million people and which is already nearly surrounded by Boko Haram territories.

One map showing Boko Haram–controlled areas in northern Nigeria, from John Campbell’s excellent blog.
Other clear and informative maps of de facto Boko Haram territories
can be found at the useful Political Geography Now blog.

One wonders if that is the point at which Nigeria will bring the full force of its military to combat the Boko Haram threat, or the point at which the international community will regard what is happening in northern Nigeria as a crisis as serious as that in Iraq and Syria with Islamic State.

Every northern Nigerian’s nightmare is to wake up in the morning and see something like this roll into town.

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with 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.  (That is shorter than the previous working title.)  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 though you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this special announcement for more information on the book.]

Boko Haram, Inspired by Rise of ISIS, Declares Caliphate in Captured Nigerian Towns

Almost certainly inspired by the success of the Islamic State (I.S., also known as ISIS or ISIL) in capturing and holding a huge swathe of Iraq and Syria and declaring it the kernel of an eventual global caliphate, the Nigerian Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram has shifted from hit-and-run mass killings and is now concentrating on holding territory and declaring an Islamic state.  This is a game-changer for Nigeria, Africa’s most populous and most combustively ethnically diverse country, and ushers in a new phase of what is clearly now a full-on sectarian civil war.

Boko Haram’s dune-buggy battalion

In a nearly hour-long video made available on August 24th (see image at the top of this article), Boko Haram’s apparent leader, Abubakar Shekau, speaking both Arabic and Hausa, declared that the recently captured town of Gwoza was now “made ... part of the Islamic caliphate.”  Last month, in a similar communiqué, Shekau had openly supported the I.S., whose leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had declared himself “caliph” and “leader of Muslims everywhere.”  But the new video did not explicitly call Gwoza part of a caliphate based in Mesopotamia.

Towns in Nigeria recently captured by Boko Haram are shown in red.
An unknown portion of rural areas between them is controlled by Boko Haram as well.

In addition to Gwoza, which is in the southern part of Borno State, in Nigeria’s predominantly-Muslim northern half, Boko Haram is also believed to hold territory elsewhere in Borno including the large town of Damboa; parts of Yobe State that include Buni Yadi; and, most recently captured, in the Madagali district of Adamawa State.  But getting accurate information is difficult; there had long been areas so consistently terrorized by Boko Haram that the Nigerian military had no effective presence there.

Abubakar Shekau

The 52-minute video also shows footage of the capture of a Nigerian military base, the seizure of a tank, and the mass execution of what appear to be about twenty civilians.

Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan: helpless

The following day, Boko Haram recaptured Gamboru–Ngala, a village cluster in Borno on the border with Cameroon—reportedly sending the local Nigerian military fleeing into Cameroon without even trying to put up a resistance—and within the past 24 hours (on August 27th), according to reports, the group was closing in on Gulak, the Madagali district capital, in the far north of Adamawa.  They are gradually building a cohesive territory, and the Nigerian state seems to lack either the resources or the political will to stop them.

Setting up an Islamic state has been tried before.  The Taliban called Afghanistan the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan during the years it ruled there, a name still used in pockets of territory it controls.  The Islamic Emirate of Somalia and the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan, in Pakistan, are names designating areas of those countries controlled by, respectively, al-Shabaab and various al-Qaeda and Taliban groups.  An “Emirate of Waqar,” declared by al-Qaeda in a town in Yemen, was recaptured by the Yemeni government in 2012.  The terrorist group Caucasus Emirate claims a state consisting of the Muslim areas in and near Russia’s North Caucasus mountains, but it does not administer any territory.

Closer to Nigeria, the al-Qaeda-linked groups Ansar al-Dine and MUJAO (Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa) controlled the northern two-thirds of Mali as an Islamic Republic of Azawad for about a year ending in early 2013 (see map above), when it was ousted by troops from France, Chad, and other countries.  It still controls small territories, and, although it piggy-backed its agenda onto the back of a separatist uprising by the Tuareg minority, its avowed aim was to turn all of Mali into an Islamic state.  Turning all of Nigeria into an Islamic emirate had been Boko Haram’s aim as well, and it had seemed absurd, since the country, which is about evenly divided between Christians and Muslims, is nearly entirely Christian in its southern half.  But the new territorial claims are more pragmatic and are clearly inspired by I.S., which began by capturing towns in the west and north of Syria, expanded into Fallujah, Iraq, earlier this year, and has recently spread its territory northward up against the autonomous Kurdistan Region.  I.S. never aimed to take all of Syria or Iraq; they are just taking as much as they can and running it like a state, and that seems to be Boko Haram’s plan as well.

Already a coalition and an international consensus is building to stop I.S. in its tracks, with even deadly enemies like the United States and Iran finding common cause on the issue.  Syria and Iraq, of course, are a vitally strategic area, both geopolitically and economically.  This is less true of the arid north of Nigeria.  So who will stop Boko Haram?

Worst-case scenario?

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

Is Gorno-Badakhshan Stirring Again?

Outsiders are still trying to sort out what happened on May 21st in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (G.B.A.O.), the sealed-off eastern half of the Republic of Tajikistan.

According to the Russian news agency ITAR–TASS, three people were killed and seven wounded in Khorog, the Badakhshani capital, in the wake of a drug raid in which police killed two local residents.  Other suspects escaped in a car and shot and wounded four police officers in the ensuing chase.

Khorog, Gorno-Badakhshan’s capital

In response to these deaths at police hands, mass protests were held, cars were overturned, and public buildings were subjected to grenade attacks and set on fire, including a court, a police station, and the public prosecutor’s office.  One policeman was killed in street confrontations associated with the protest violence.  This was followed by demonstrations in the days following, with the public demanding an investigation.

Though the situation seems to have calmed down since then, it may have had an ethnic and sectarian dimension.  Gorno-Badakhshan—along with the adjacent part of Afghanistan, the eastern “panhandle” province of Badakhshan—is home to the Pamiri minority.  Pamiris, who like Tajiks speak a language related to Persian (see map below), follow Shi’a Islam—and in particular are Ismailis, i.e. followers of the Aga Khan—unlike the Tajiks, Uzbeks, and other Sunni Muslims who make up the other 97% of Tajikistan’s population.  An estimated 100,000 Pamiris and members of a related ethnic group, the Gharmis, were slaughtered in the civil war that lasted from 1992 to 1997 after Tajikistan’s separation from the Soviet Union.

A scene from the violence in Gorno-Badakhshan in 2012

Since then, Gorno-Badakhshan, which covers nearly half of Tajikistan’s territory, has largely run its own affairs, without molestation by the central government.  The conflict was revived in 2012, when the government moved in to reoccupy the region for a while following the murder of a central-government security-chief, which Tajikistan blamed on Tolib Ayombekov, a Pamiri warlord from the 1990s who became a major drugs and weapons trafficking boss.

It is hard to know what goes on in Gorno-Badakhshan.  The area is sealed off from much of the world. But its fate has wider strategic implications.  The Russian government acted aggressively to snuff out the civil war in the late 1990s out of fears that the ascendant Taliban government in Afghanistan could take advantage of ethnic affinities across the Afghan–Tajik border to gain a foothold there.  Both Pamiris and Afghanistan’s ethnic mainstream, after all, had long-standing resentment of Soviet and Russian influence.  It is not as though the Taliban has particularly much influence in the Pamiri areas of Afghanistan; but the appearance or threat of it could be enough for authorities on either side to take overly precipitous action.  The area also borders the People’s Republic of China, in particular the vast and predominantly-Muslim Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where the Beijing government is using separatist violence by the oppressed Uyghur people (some of which might even be staged, in “false flag” operations, as many Uyghur exiles believe) as the excuse for a crackdown—and for building cross-border alliances with Tajikistan, Pakistan, Russia, and other states to crack down on “separatist” and “terrorist” networks.

This map of Central Asian languages, seems to classify Pamiri (controversially) as Tajik.
It also shows, in pink, the presence of Kyrgyz people in eastern Gorno-Badakhshan.

One Central Asia expert, Omar Ashour, believes that the currently ongoing winding-down of the United States and NATO war in Afghanistan may be leading to instability (which of course is different from suggesting that those forces should stay). Some groups—the Taliban among them—are betting that the drawdown will leave power vacuums that they can fill. “I think what the NATO departure will do,” Ashour says, “is just make all the major players in Tajikistan think that they can expand their influence without having some big brother in the neighborhood intervene to empower one side or the other.”

Tajik soldiers display weapons captured in Gorno-Badakhshan raids, in 2010.

Surely, in a larger sense, China and especially Russia feel that way too. In particular, the new aggressive “Monroe Doctrine” approach to the former Soviet lands which President Vladimir Putin made public earlier this year with his annexation of Crimea lends extra significance to any unrest in Soviet successor states. The possibility, or even the fear, that events are the work of Kremlin-directed agents provocateurs creating a pretext for Russian intervention or annexation, will help determine the progress of any conflict.  We already see this happening with the ongoing coup d’état situation in the unrecognized Russian puppet state of Abkhazia, on Georgia’s territory.  Tajik instability also serves Russian interests by making Tajiks feel they would be safer inside the new “Eurasian Union” trade bloc of Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus inaugurated last week as a counterbalance to the European Union.  Putin has already baldly exploited territorial anxieties to arm-twist Armenia (a prospective Eurasian Union member) and Kazakhstan to pull closer to Russia.

Tajik-Americans angered by the lack of information coming out of the violence-torn
areas in their homeland demonstrate in front of the Tajik embassy in Washington, D.C.

Ashour added, “Tajikistan is really on the brink at the moment and I think without some kind of international pressure to start some serious reforms in the security sector, in the military sector, and the political system, I think this country may see another cycle of heavy violence.”

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

Sochi Update: Puppet States under a Cloud, Pussy Riot in New York, Ukrainian Hijacker Questioned

Members of the Ukrainian feminist political collective Femen demonstrated against the Sochi Olympics
in front of the Russian embassy in Berlin.

I admit it.  I think politics is the only interesting spectator sport at the Olympics.  Here’s the latest:

Ukrainian hijacking
Authorities in Turkey have confirmed that a drunk Ukrainian man who (as reported at the time in this blog) tried to hijack a plane to Sochi during the opening ceremonies acted alone.  The Pegasus Airlines flight from Kharkov, Ukraine, to Istanbul, landed in Istanbul anyway and the man was arrested without incident.  His claim that a bomb was on the plane was false.  However, there was a political connection: the would-be hijacker, Artem Hozlov, age 45, said that his demands included the release of Ukrainian “hostages”—a reference to arrested anti-government protestors.  And he said he wanted to go to Sochi because that was “where Vladimir Putin and Viktor Yanukovych are meeting, both of whom have blood on their hands.”  (Ukraine was listed in this blog as no. 4 among “10 Political Causes Likely to Disrupt the Sochi Games.”)

The scene on the tarmac in Istanbul after Friday’s aborted hijacking

Dagestan
Meanwhile, the insurgency just east of Sochi in Russia’s predominantly-Muslim North Caucasus region, continued apace.  In Makhachkala, capital of the ethnically diverse Republic of Dagestan, Russian special forces killed five militants and arrested a sixth in a house raid on February 8th.  The group’s leader, Alexei Pashentsev, was an ethnically Russian convert to Islam, an increasingly common phenomenon in the Muslim insurgency.  The five were linked to the Buynayksk gang, one of a whole network of warring drugs and weapons smuggling gangs who are interlaced with the Caucasus Emirate movement’s separatist insurgency in Dagestan and other republics (listed in this blog as no. 1 among “10 Political Causes Sure to Disrupt the Sochi Games”).  But there is not necessarily any link between this incident and the Olympics—or with last year’s bus bombings in Volgograd, for which the Dagestan branch of the Emirate claimed responsibility.

Abkhazia and South Ossetia
It was decided early on that Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two “sovereign” puppet states carved by Russian forces out of the northern flank of the Republic of Georgia, would not compete as independent states in the Olympics (as reported on in this blog recently).  After all, only five nations in the world recognize them—Russia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Nauru, and Tuvalu.  (Even Belarus has better sense.)  This has infuriated Abkhaz and Ossete nationalists, even those who realize that this a snub from the International Olympic Committee (I.O.C.), not from Russia.  Attention then turned to whether Georgia would boycott the Olympics, but they haven’t, even though Georgia and Russia have no diplomatic relations.  Georgia was infuriated by Russia’s decision to extend its Sochi “security perimeter” into Abkhazian—and thus, as far as most of the world is concerned, Georgian—territory.  Two days before the opening ceremonies, the former prime minister of Denmark and current secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Anders Fogh Rasmussen, expressed indignation at that move, saying, “ We have noted the recent decision to temporarily extend the so-called border zone of Abkhazia further into Georgian territory without the Georgian government’s consent.  We are very concerned about that decision.”  (“Concern” is cheap.  NATO stood by and yawned in 2008 when Russia invaded its Georgia—an official partner, but not member, of NATO—in the South Ossetia War.)

Abkhazia’s president, Aleander Ankvab, with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in 2011.
(Puppet strings not visible.)

One dicey issue was what to do in the case of the maps of different nations projected on the large screen as national teams entered the arena on February 7th in the opening ceremony.  When Georgia’s team came in, the map of Georgia shown had very convenient clouds covering Abkhazia and South Ossetia, thus dodging the issue entirely.  For the citizens of these forgotten nations—and for the Georgians ethnically cleansed from their territories when they were created—that must have been a cloudy omen of a different kind.

I know, it looks some awful microwaved dinner that might be served on an Aeroflot flight to Vladivostok.
In fact, this is a map of Georgia, with Abkhazia and South Ossetia conventiently shrouded by clouds,
 on the Sochi opening-ceremonies Jumbotron.

Observers waited to see whether the two quasi-states would be treated as independent in other, more subtle symbolic ways at the Games.  (Nearly all Abkhazians and South Ossetians hold Russian passports, so it is easy for them to compete as athletes.)  Abkhazia’s president (and Soviet-era K.G.B. chief), Alexander Ankvab, and South Ossetia’s president, Leonid Tibilov, attended the opening ceremonies but not as “official guests” of either the Russian Federation or the I.O.C.  But they held some diplomatic-style meetings—with each other and, rather chillingly for those who think their puppet-state status is a mere prelude to annexation by Russia, with Leonid Slutsky, who chairs Russia’s parliamentary committee on Commonwealth of Independent States (C.I.S.) and Eurasian integration.  There has, after all, been talk of the two republics joining Russia’s nascent customs union with Belarus, Kazakhstan, and possibly Armenia—the very trading bloc which is the opposite pole to the European Union (E.U.) in Ukraine’s ongoing political divide over the country’s geopolitical orientation.  (Abkhazia and South Ossetia were listed recently in this blog as no. 5 among “10 Political Causes Sure to Disrupt the Sochi Games.”)

Georgia’s Olympic team at the opening ceremonies

Pussy Riot
While Russia and hundreds of athletes are making headlines in Sochi, the country’s most famous dissidents are making headlines in the West.  Two members of the persecuted punk band and political collective Pussy Riot met in NewYork with the city’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, and his wife.  Among the topics discussed were prison reform.  The two women, Nadya Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina, said they were interested in visiting some American prisons.  Their visit to the United States comes 50 years, nearly  to the day, after the Beatles’ appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.  Does this mean that they are heralding a pop-music “Russian invasion”?

Pussy Rioters at an Amnesty International function in New York this week

Next, in Berlin, Germany, Tolokonnikova and Alekhina visited the Reichstag and the Berlin Film Festival and indicated they were considering a run for office, in Moscow’s municipal legislature.  (Pussy Riot was listed in this blog as no. 6 among “10 Political Causes Sure to Disrupt the Sochi Games.”)

Gay rights
Expressions of solidarity with Russia’s persecuted gays and lesbians (no. 3 in this blog’s list of “10 Political Causes Sure to Disrupt the Sochi Games”) have been so far muted at these Games.  After all, wearing anything ideological like a rainbow flag on an Olympic uniform is forbidden under I.O.C. rules.  But there have been a few exceptions in other areas.  Brian Boitano, the U.S. figure-skater who created shockwaves of surprise by coming out as gay last month, was in Sochi and was giving interviews on gay rights and issues.  And Iceland’s minister of science, education, and culture, Illugi Gunnarsson, attended the opening ceremonies wearing a rather fetching “gay pride” rainbow tie.

Illugi Gunnarsson

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with my 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.  The book, which contains dozens of maps and over 500 flags, is now in the layout phase and should be on shelves, and available on Amazon, by early fall 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even though you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook.]

Related articles from this blog:

“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)

“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” (Nov. 2013)

“Abkhazia & South Ossetia Won’t Compete in Sochi Olympics, I.O.C. Declares” (Oct. 2013)

“She Recognizes Me, She Recognizes Me Not: Fickle Vanuatu Dumps Abkhazia for Georgia” (March 2013)

“Separatist Football Update: Carnage at a Dagestan–Netherlands Match, Alderney vs. Sealand, Barotseland’s National Team” (Aug. 2012)

“Somaliland’s Own Mo Farah Clinches Olympic Immortality” (Aug. 2012)

“Olympic Update: Femen Protest, Bigoted Judokas, Sudanese Defectors” (Aug. 2012)

“Celts, Cypriots, Aborigines Raise Stink at Olympics: Ethnonationalist Protest Update” (July 2012)

“10 Ethnonationalist Causes That Might Disrupt the Olympics” (July 2012)

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