Finding myself back in Canada following a seven-month stint in Montenegro, I am still sorting through my experiences. Being a subscriber to regular news items from the excellent Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), I found that much of what I witnessed and experienced in Podgorica (and elsewhere) was complimented by the informed content I read from the folks at BIRN.
I frequently found myself pondering the issue of relationships and the lives of young people outside the academic/professional sphere. I was especially curious to see how people my age related to the transformations taking place in their society, as well as how these changes were affecting them.
Montenegro is a special case in point, since the country is so small; its population is somewhere in the vicinity of 650,000, so I was expecting some degree of modesty and conservative traditions to predominate everyday life. Everyone knows someone who, in turn, knows some other people; what goes around comes around. Networks are extremely wide and strong in the Balkans, a legacy of a decade of war and crippling sanctions, but also steeped in tradition.
This story, therefore, is slightly unrelated to what I have described, and it deals specifically with Serbia. Its conclusions and implications, however, apply and extend to Montenegro, and some of what I learned and observed while there. This piece reports: "Health officials report that between 150,000-200,000 abortions are carried out every year in Serbia, news-site Mondo reported Monday...Every twelfth woman between the ages of 15-49 years has had an abortion. Most had not used contraception."
Serbia's total population is a little higher than 7,300,000. In the early 1980s, Serbia already had the reputation for having one of the highest abortion rates in Europe, a fact that nationalists failed to point out when they identified the high Albanian-speaking population within Kosovo and the declining number of Serbs in the province.
I do not know the statistics for Montenegro, but they are something just as frighteningly high, in proportion to the country's small size. Statistics are hard to come by, since Montenegro keeps getting looped in with Serbia, despite three-plus years of independence (go figure). Someone told me that it was in the range of the thousands.
Returning to this story: "[Dr. Katarina] Sedlecki [of the Family Planning Centre of Serbia] considers the abortion situation in Serbia as severe as every fourth abortion was carried out on women who had already had four or more abortions...She added that there are few organised efforts to promote sex education, or to provide information on how to limit family size in Serbia's family planning programme...Sedlecki stressed that economic factors are not the main reason for the high number of abortion cases in Serbia."
The story points out that other researchers indicated that there remain low levels of knowledge concerning contraception, the nature of abortions, "a belief that modern contraceptive methods are harmful to health, and a number of psychological barriers, [including] those arising from relationships with partners." They should also have pointed out, as I witnessed first-hand repeatedly, the social stigmas that befall women in particular that choose to become sexually active (or are just perceived to be such).
Little else can be said from this report, only that so many of the social problems confronting these 'transition' countries, like Serbia and Montenegro, are as much structural and political as they are societal and habit-borne. Montenegro is the tougher fish to fry, just because these realities are shrouded in tradition, secrecy and patriarchy. I found myself frequently frustrated, unfairly perhaps, by such tradition-honed factors that have persisted, despite the obvious negative outcomes that result. This arena of abortion rates in the region is just one aspect of this, and persists not so much out of necessity as it does because of other factors that, evidently, trump economics and the tangibles.
Revolutions have this invisible, yet potent factor to take into account. Montenegro (and Serbia) has a long way to go -- a generation or two, I would reckon -- before anyone can talk about full-out success in conquering legacies and habits forged by past experiences. I say this with sadness, because Montenegro is a country I adore, and consider like my second home and nationality.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Just another day of ‘standard operating procedure’
Torture has been a constant in world history for as long as rivalries, war and intelligence gathering has taken place. Extreme situations and circumstances, the reasoning has gone, denote the need for extreme measures; to fight fire with fire or, according to the last U.S. administration, to fight terror with terror. The ends justify the means, and in the Iraqi arena of the ‘war on terror,’ these extreme, ostensibly intelligence-gathering measures against “security detainees” were helping to save the lives of American soldiers being killed by insurgents.
The many photographs of prison abuse and torture that were published worldwide in 2004 horrified as much as outraged. It was a phenomenon matched by the grotesque reactions from official circles in Washington DC – President Bush admitting to the low ebb to which America’s image had dropped, but then reiterating “we do not torture,” even though irrefutable proof would continue to emerge that, certainly in Iraq, torture not only happened but was sanctioned at the highest level. Former Vice-President Dick Cheney, in moments of almost homicidal and maniacal bluntness, has continuously justified the use of heavy-handed techniques as indispensable to fighting America’s new enemies.
So much of what happened at Abu Ghraib – that is, the tip of the proverbial iceberg that the public knows about – started out as a legal grey zone that originated with the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan, not long after the 9/11 terror attacks. Then, like a snowball, one thing led to another, and this legal grey zone that identified Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters as not belonging to any existing nation-state and, therefore, a loophole within the Geneva Conventions, set out the groundwork for what was to follow in what the Bush administration identified as another arena for the ‘war on terror.’ In short, the ghoulish and obscene photographs of American volunteers doing these things to Iraqi detainees failed to tell the whole story.
Over the course of a short time span, I read the book Standard Operating Procedure by Philip Gourevitch, a journalist and writer that I deeply admire, having first read his work on post-genocide Rwanda, as well as his lesser-known book about an unsolved murder in New York City. This is his first collaborative work, having co-authored this book with the filmmaker Errol Morris, who had earlier released a documentary of the same name (I have yet to see it).
To say that I was expecting something mind-blowing is doing an injustice, though what I expected is just what I received, as will anyone else that reads this book. It not only conveys just what and how Abu Ghraib happened, as told through the words of its chief perpetrators and participants, but also is a potent rebuff to those supporters, past and present, of the Iraq War and regime change. While torture and the usage of “black sites” has been used by the Central Intelligence Agency since its inception post-1945, so much of what is written here reads like the past: the same old story of intelligence failures and techniques that have taken place time and again.
There is so much to say about Standard Operating Procedure, as the darkness it dredges up is presented in a fast-paced tone, but is inherently complex and multifaceted at the same time. The United States, and by extension the entire ‘coalition of the willing,’ were sent to post-Saddam Iraq in March 2003 to neuter the threat posed by the old regime’s weapons of mass destruction and sponsorship of terrorism – links that, notwithstanding a few diehards that insist that there was a connection between these things, did not exist. What started out as a belief that the abuse of prisoners, a term never used by the coalition forces, was the result of a few rogue elements turned out to be an open manifestation of authorized usage of intense techniques to gather what was supposed to be a source of vital information about the post-Saddam insurgency in Iraq. The President, the Vice-President and the Defence Secretary, not to mention the occupation forces themselves, remain culpable for all that happened.
Yet, when all was said and done, a small handful of individuals were punished, and no one above the rank of sergeant was prosecuted. In fact, even before the scandal came out, government and military echelons were more interested in finding ways of keeping things quiet and out of the spotlight – an effort thwarted in no small part by journalists and some within the military that approached them with these incriminating materials. The head honchos, and all members of the Central Intelligence Agency were given a quiet, but guaranteed immunity. There are standards, it seems, and there are standards.
The story Gourevitch and Morris have written is largely told from the voices of the Military Police stationed in Abu Ghraib and the surrounding military zone. Morris, who was the main interviewer of these key participants, has had plenty of experience in interviewing, and his skill at getting his subjects to simply talk is beneficial as it is revealing. Most of these personnel were clueless as to what they were supposed to be doing, and were entrusted to extract intelligence from what turned out to be mostly Iraqis caught in the wrong place and at the wrong time, with no significance whatsoever – about 90 percent of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib were innocent of any wrongdoing, insurgency-related or otherwise.
The many photographs of prison abuse and torture that were published worldwide in 2004 horrified as much as outraged. It was a phenomenon matched by the grotesque reactions from official circles in Washington DC – President Bush admitting to the low ebb to which America’s image had dropped, but then reiterating “we do not torture,” even though irrefutable proof would continue to emerge that, certainly in Iraq, torture not only happened but was sanctioned at the highest level. Former Vice-President Dick Cheney, in moments of almost homicidal and maniacal bluntness, has continuously justified the use of heavy-handed techniques as indispensable to fighting America’s new enemies.
So much of what happened at Abu Ghraib – that is, the tip of the proverbial iceberg that the public knows about – started out as a legal grey zone that originated with the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan, not long after the 9/11 terror attacks. Then, like a snowball, one thing led to another, and this legal grey zone that identified Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters as not belonging to any existing nation-state and, therefore, a loophole within the Geneva Conventions, set out the groundwork for what was to follow in what the Bush administration identified as another arena for the ‘war on terror.’ In short, the ghoulish and obscene photographs of American volunteers doing these things to Iraqi detainees failed to tell the whole story.
Over the course of a short time span, I read the book Standard Operating Procedure by Philip Gourevitch, a journalist and writer that I deeply admire, having first read his work on post-genocide Rwanda, as well as his lesser-known book about an unsolved murder in New York City. This is his first collaborative work, having co-authored this book with the filmmaker Errol Morris, who had earlier released a documentary of the same name (I have yet to see it).
To say that I was expecting something mind-blowing is doing an injustice, though what I expected is just what I received, as will anyone else that reads this book. It not only conveys just what and how Abu Ghraib happened, as told through the words of its chief perpetrators and participants, but also is a potent rebuff to those supporters, past and present, of the Iraq War and regime change. While torture and the usage of “black sites” has been used by the Central Intelligence Agency since its inception post-1945, so much of what is written here reads like the past: the same old story of intelligence failures and techniques that have taken place time and again.
There is so much to say about Standard Operating Procedure, as the darkness it dredges up is presented in a fast-paced tone, but is inherently complex and multifaceted at the same time. The United States, and by extension the entire ‘coalition of the willing,’ were sent to post-Saddam Iraq in March 2003 to neuter the threat posed by the old regime’s weapons of mass destruction and sponsorship of terrorism – links that, notwithstanding a few diehards that insist that there was a connection between these things, did not exist. What started out as a belief that the abuse of prisoners, a term never used by the coalition forces, was the result of a few rogue elements turned out to be an open manifestation of authorized usage of intense techniques to gather what was supposed to be a source of vital information about the post-Saddam insurgency in Iraq. The President, the Vice-President and the Defence Secretary, not to mention the occupation forces themselves, remain culpable for all that happened.
Yet, when all was said and done, a small handful of individuals were punished, and no one above the rank of sergeant was prosecuted. In fact, even before the scandal came out, government and military echelons were more interested in finding ways of keeping things quiet and out of the spotlight – an effort thwarted in no small part by journalists and some within the military that approached them with these incriminating materials. The head honchos, and all members of the Central Intelligence Agency were given a quiet, but guaranteed immunity. There are standards, it seems, and there are standards.
The story Gourevitch and Morris have written is largely told from the voices of the Military Police stationed in Abu Ghraib and the surrounding military zone. Morris, who was the main interviewer of these key participants, has had plenty of experience in interviewing, and his skill at getting his subjects to simply talk is beneficial as it is revealing. Most of these personnel were clueless as to what they were supposed to be doing, and were entrusted to extract intelligence from what turned out to be mostly Iraqis caught in the wrong place and at the wrong time, with no significance whatsoever – about 90 percent of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib were innocent of any wrongdoing, insurgency-related or otherwise.
Those that managed to be acquitted of any wrongdoing by nefarious Iraqi judges were sent back to Abu Ghraib for months on end, pending their official release approvals. In between this, a few American MPs began taking snapshots of interrogations as a way of distancing themselves from what they knew was inherently wrong; one of them, Sabrina Harman, said she took the photographs because she wanted to document and bear witness to the crimes in the prison, thereby acquitting herself of any responsibility. There were others, of course, that were not so benign, and delighted at the chance to slam heads against walls or sexually degrade inmates.
Some critics have looked down on the decision Gourevitch and Morris made in not including any of the abuse photographs in the book. Just as well, since they only tell part of the story – and they can be found all over the Internet and in other documentary collections. While Gourevitch is impressively detached from his subject and offers no personal disgust into his work, it does sometimes seep through, serving as a reminder of the ubiquity of disgust, shame, disappointment and outrage that he must have had to confront while putting this book together.
Some critics have looked down on the decision Gourevitch and Morris made in not including any of the abuse photographs in the book. Just as well, since they only tell part of the story – and they can be found all over the Internet and in other documentary collections. While Gourevitch is impressively detached from his subject and offers no personal disgust into his work, it does sometimes seep through, serving as a reminder of the ubiquity of disgust, shame, disappointment and outrage that he must have had to confront while putting this book together.
Since then, US President Barack Obama has effectively spelled an end to the ‘war on terror,’ having ordered not only the closure of black prison sites worldwide but also of Guantanamo Bay’s facilities. Obama has also made plans to re-criminalize torture, thereby potentially seeing investigations and legal proceedings against senior members of the old Bush administration. He has also indicated a withdrawal of American forces from Iraq in the foreseeable future; a decision that, while significant and another break from the past, may well end up doing far more harm than good. Everywhere one looks concerning Iraq, they come away having seen an indelible mess and screw-up that will beguile and horrify for a long time. Gourevitch and Morris have put together a work that will stay relevant long after this war has fully ended.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
You are the perfect drug
Trent Reznor is probably best known for his creative and absolutely smashing musical entity Nine Inch Nails. Last summer, my best friend and I were fortunate enough to see the group perform at the Air Canada Centre; the stifling summertime heat was matched by the absolute intensity and mind-blowing performance they delivered.
Reznor's personal experiences of addiction, depression and darkness is as much sad as it is hopeful, as he overcame his personal demons while still maintaining a commitment to his musical genius. I remember, back in late 1994, when I first heard The Downward Spiral -- a little shocking looking back, as I was just in elementary school -- and being hooked on it, off and on since then.
Granted, I have a bigger appreciation for the old Trent of the Pretty Hate Machine and Broken days, but I still listen to his newer stuff, the most recent of which he allowed to be downloaded, for free, off his web site. I am sad to hear rumours that he may not be touring as Nine Inch Nails for the next while, if ever again. I guess he just reached and crossed a personal threshold that now warrants a quiet retreat and recovery. All the same, hats off to the man.
I came across this long, but fascinating article about Nine Inch Nails' initiatives outside of their music, and into the ways in which they distribute their work while simultaneously reconciling themselves to the new realities facing the record industry and keeping links with their fan base alive and well. Those realities are, of course, the rise of Internet-based file sharing and downloading of music, often illegally -- something that inevitably is nurturing a whole generation of youngsters that view music as something they are entitled to pluck and use as they see fit.
I still have vivid memories of eagerly going to a local HMV music shop to buy the newly-released album from a given band, without having heard anything from it, and then driving home, trembling with delight at what I will expect when I fire up the CD. There is a certain magic quality to this, which probably explains why I still, to this day, buy CDs -- even though they are played just once, technically, on my computer, which then feeds everything to an IPod.
Where has all the magic gone? Computers, the Internet, mp3 files, ITunes -- that all sounds too robotic, which says much for where we are going as a society...but that is also going off topic.
"Reznor hasn't been trying to save the record industry, and doesn't push himself forward as any kind of example or seer. All he has been trying to do is to release Nine Inch Nails's music to the greatest effect. Some of the financial decisions he has made along the way seem almost suicidal. But, even so, perhaps more than anyone else right now, he has been offering the record industry a remarkable lesson in survival and some clues as to how, for those who are smart and passionate and flexible, there are ways forward."
The whole story is there, for anyone that wishes to read it all. Reznor and, by extension, Nine Inch Nails achieved what is, for many, almost unachievable; they did not let it get to their heads, nor did they forget their humble and servant-status origins before moving deep into the mainstream (and the perks that have come with it, both artistically and financially). I reckon, speaking as a fan and admirer of Reznor and his music, that this is the proverbial icing on the cake: as practical as it is a recognition of, and homage to, his fan base, as much as it is self-preservation in the face of changing realities.
As this article wraps up, "Now theirs is a more controlled, coiled anger; the sincerity without the damage. Reznor has prospered by realising that there are some changes it is dumb not to make." Music-making meeting the politics of the recording industry, and an embracing of the new realities that emanate from it: that is the perfect drug, if there ever was one.
Reznor's personal experiences of addiction, depression and darkness is as much sad as it is hopeful, as he overcame his personal demons while still maintaining a commitment to his musical genius. I remember, back in late 1994, when I first heard The Downward Spiral -- a little shocking looking back, as I was just in elementary school -- and being hooked on it, off and on since then.
Granted, I have a bigger appreciation for the old Trent of the Pretty Hate Machine and Broken days, but I still listen to his newer stuff, the most recent of which he allowed to be downloaded, for free, off his web site. I am sad to hear rumours that he may not be touring as Nine Inch Nails for the next while, if ever again. I guess he just reached and crossed a personal threshold that now warrants a quiet retreat and recovery. All the same, hats off to the man.
I came across this long, but fascinating article about Nine Inch Nails' initiatives outside of their music, and into the ways in which they distribute their work while simultaneously reconciling themselves to the new realities facing the record industry and keeping links with their fan base alive and well. Those realities are, of course, the rise of Internet-based file sharing and downloading of music, often illegally -- something that inevitably is nurturing a whole generation of youngsters that view music as something they are entitled to pluck and use as they see fit.
I still have vivid memories of eagerly going to a local HMV music shop to buy the newly-released album from a given band, without having heard anything from it, and then driving home, trembling with delight at what I will expect when I fire up the CD. There is a certain magic quality to this, which probably explains why I still, to this day, buy CDs -- even though they are played just once, technically, on my computer, which then feeds everything to an IPod.
Where has all the magic gone? Computers, the Internet, mp3 files, ITunes -- that all sounds too robotic, which says much for where we are going as a society...but that is also going off topic.
"Reznor hasn't been trying to save the record industry, and doesn't push himself forward as any kind of example or seer. All he has been trying to do is to release Nine Inch Nails's music to the greatest effect. Some of the financial decisions he has made along the way seem almost suicidal. But, even so, perhaps more than anyone else right now, he has been offering the record industry a remarkable lesson in survival and some clues as to how, for those who are smart and passionate and flexible, there are ways forward."
The whole story is there, for anyone that wishes to read it all. Reznor and, by extension, Nine Inch Nails achieved what is, for many, almost unachievable; they did not let it get to their heads, nor did they forget their humble and servant-status origins before moving deep into the mainstream (and the perks that have come with it, both artistically and financially). I reckon, speaking as a fan and admirer of Reznor and his music, that this is the proverbial icing on the cake: as practical as it is a recognition of, and homage to, his fan base, as much as it is self-preservation in the face of changing realities.
As this article wraps up, "Now theirs is a more controlled, coiled anger; the sincerity without the damage. Reznor has prospered by realising that there are some changes it is dumb not to make." Music-making meeting the politics of the recording industry, and an embracing of the new realities that emanate from it: that is the perfect drug, if there ever was one.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Citizenship and assimilation
The former Soviet republic of Moldova, with a population of just over 4 million, remains one of the smallest post-Soviet republics. It is also the poorest country in Europe, with a dilapidated infrastructure, outmoded agricultural techniques, and about one-fourth of its working population that does not technically work in Moldova.
In 2001, President Vladimir Voronin, of the Communist Party, became President; his government recently was re-elected, but not without triggering violent spasms of unrest in the capital of Chisinau that forced a recount reiterating the Communists' victory.
It is also the site of a peculiar form of separatism, east of the river Dniester, which is populated by a sizable number of ethnic Ukrainians and Russians, along with Moldovans, but which is controlled by former Soviet political elites that played the nationalism card just before Moldova became independent in August 1991.
Really, though, the conundrum over the 'Trans-Dniester Moldovan Republic' is a thinly-disguised squabble between the Moldovan authorities and the ex-Soviet elite in Tiraspol, who preside over an enclave of Soviet-style decorum and bravado, complete with rampant organized crime, illicit weapons dealing, human trafficking, and minimal central authority. The "president" of Trans-Dniester, Igor Smirnov, runs the place as his personal fief, with his two sons running a good deal of the breakaway state's business.
Moldovans, historically, have ethnic, cultural and linguistic ties with neighbouring Romania; between 1918-1940, Romania and Moldova were one country, and it was following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1940, followed by the insanity of the Second World War, that Moldova became a part of the USSR. Few politicians in post-1989 Romania have been keen on nurturing irredentism in Moldova, given the country's nasty poverty and the instability it harbours with Trans-Dniester.
The Romanian government, however -- along with Russia -- has long been accused of meddling in Chisinau's affairs. Curious, then, that the Romanian government has been making it easier, as of late, for Moldovans to acquire a Romanian passport, much to the chagrin of the Moldovan authorities. Romania's President, Trajan Basescu, says he wishes to avoid a new "iron curtain" from falling between the two countries, but one cannot help but wonder if this is just an alternative to the mud-slinging, territory-altering prospect of somehow reunifying the two countries together. The last time this possibility emerged was right in 1990-1991, but Romania was nowhere near its current level of stability and economic prospects, let alone EU and NATO membership, at the time.
"This mass granting of the Romanian citizenship is a way to assimilate the Republic of Moldova...We see it a threat to the statehood, a threat to the integrity and sovereignty of our country." Or so says Vladimir Turcanu, a Moldovan MP. More than 100,000 Moldovans have Romanian passports already, and there are another 20,000 applications in the pipeline (though President Basescu cited a figure of 650,000 envelopes at the Romanian embassy in Chisinau).
If this all keeps up, Moldova may well become a closer rendition of post-Soviet Armenia, another poverty-mired country in which one-third of its population has left the country for a better life abroad since 1991. Eighteen years of supposed nation-building and identity-fostering will have been in vain, and a country will have virtually vanished, to be replaced by...what?
In 2001, President Vladimir Voronin, of the Communist Party, became President; his government recently was re-elected, but not without triggering violent spasms of unrest in the capital of Chisinau that forced a recount reiterating the Communists' victory.
It is also the site of a peculiar form of separatism, east of the river Dniester, which is populated by a sizable number of ethnic Ukrainians and Russians, along with Moldovans, but which is controlled by former Soviet political elites that played the nationalism card just before Moldova became independent in August 1991.
Really, though, the conundrum over the 'Trans-Dniester Moldovan Republic' is a thinly-disguised squabble between the Moldovan authorities and the ex-Soviet elite in Tiraspol, who preside over an enclave of Soviet-style decorum and bravado, complete with rampant organized crime, illicit weapons dealing, human trafficking, and minimal central authority. The "president" of Trans-Dniester, Igor Smirnov, runs the place as his personal fief, with his two sons running a good deal of the breakaway state's business.
Moldovans, historically, have ethnic, cultural and linguistic ties with neighbouring Romania; between 1918-1940, Romania and Moldova were one country, and it was following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1940, followed by the insanity of the Second World War, that Moldova became a part of the USSR. Few politicians in post-1989 Romania have been keen on nurturing irredentism in Moldova, given the country's nasty poverty and the instability it harbours with Trans-Dniester.
The Romanian government, however -- along with Russia -- has long been accused of meddling in Chisinau's affairs. Curious, then, that the Romanian government has been making it easier, as of late, for Moldovans to acquire a Romanian passport, much to the chagrin of the Moldovan authorities. Romania's President, Trajan Basescu, says he wishes to avoid a new "iron curtain" from falling between the two countries, but one cannot help but wonder if this is just an alternative to the mud-slinging, territory-altering prospect of somehow reunifying the two countries together. The last time this possibility emerged was right in 1990-1991, but Romania was nowhere near its current level of stability and economic prospects, let alone EU and NATO membership, at the time.
"This mass granting of the Romanian citizenship is a way to assimilate the Republic of Moldova...We see it a threat to the statehood, a threat to the integrity and sovereignty of our country." Or so says Vladimir Turcanu, a Moldovan MP. More than 100,000 Moldovans have Romanian passports already, and there are another 20,000 applications in the pipeline (though President Basescu cited a figure of 650,000 envelopes at the Romanian embassy in Chisinau).
If this all keeps up, Moldova may well become a closer rendition of post-Soviet Armenia, another poverty-mired country in which one-third of its population has left the country for a better life abroad since 1991. Eighteen years of supposed nation-building and identity-fostering will have been in vain, and a country will have virtually vanished, to be replaced by...what?
Thursday, April 23, 2009
We will, we will...but should we, and can we?
Sometimes, there are developments that encompass a multitude of issues all at once. The news that Turkey and Armenia are, apparently, set to repair and resume ties of some sort after mutually committing one another to persona non Grata-status since 1993, stands out in this regard.
The issue covers, first, the endemic issue of what happened to Anatolian Armenians in 1915, and whether or not it actually constituted genocide. It is a subject best left to historians on both sides of the border, but sometimes such things are just not possible. Too often, nationalists are unable (read: unwilling) to concede facts and think in a level-headed fashion and are more interested in scoring polemical points.
That is an issue in itself. Turkey's ambassador to Canada was recently withdrawn over Prime Minister Harper's referral to 1915 as "genocide," a stance that Ottawa has taken, much to the chagrin of Turkey. South of the border, President Obama is likely set to reiterate his personal stance on the issue (affirmative) at the end of April, when a remembrance day by Armenians takes place, and US Presidents traditionally speak about the subject.
Then, there is the nature of Turkish-Armenian relations that have remained foul, symbolically, for a century, but which became acute post-1993 over the Nagorny Karabagh war. This is an enclave within the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, populated now totally by Armenians, which turned into a quasi-kerfuffle between Armenia and Azerbaijan in early 1988. Following 1991, it turned into a full-out war between the enclave, backed by Armenia (and Russia), and Azerbaijan (which also received help from Russia -- go figure).
A fragile ceasefire was imposed in May 1994, but Armenia and Azerbaijan remain technically at war, with skirmishes sometimes taking place. Peace efforts since then have all failed, mainly because Armenia and Nagorny Karabagh's leadership have been more interested in pursuing nationalist policies and catering to the shouts emanating from the Armenian diaspora (think former Armenian President Robert Kocharian versus his predecessor Levon Ter-Petrossian).
Azerbaijan, on the other hand, pumped to the brim with hard and bountiful oil cash, is one of the world's most corrupt states, with a small clique, run first by Heidar Aliyev and now his son, Ilham, controlling the political landscape. The Azerbaijani side of the coin has, in turn, been unwilling to pursue a resolution to the conflict because of domestic political factors that have consistently opposed a reconciliation with the Armenians.
Even now, in the spirit of Turkish-Armenian normalizations, Baku is howling: the status of the Nabucco oil pipeline is at stake, which would reduce the EU's dependence on Russian energy, but which Baku is threatening could be compromised by a shift to the Russians, given that they have already offered to buy Azerbaijani crude at European prices. "Opening the border could lead to tensions in the region and would be contradictory to the interests of Azerbaijan," Azeri Foreign Ministry spokesman Elkhan Polukhov has said.
Finally, the icing on this ziggurat-like cake is Turkey's EU ambitions. Ankara's support for Baku has raised the ire of the folks in Brussels (though, admittedly, it does not take much for them to find issue with Turkey in the best of times), as has its stance on the events of 1915. Turkey's trajectory is also at issue now, a certain 'damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't'-like scenario.
At the same time, it is being pressured by the United States to assist regional peace efforts through its traditional brokerage and go-between efforts at mediating long-standing crises in the region, as between Israel and Syria, and Iran's nuclear ambitions.
This is definitely something to watch, as the stakes are enormous and the issues laden with every kind of explosive you can imagine.
The issue covers, first, the endemic issue of what happened to Anatolian Armenians in 1915, and whether or not it actually constituted genocide. It is a subject best left to historians on both sides of the border, but sometimes such things are just not possible. Too often, nationalists are unable (read: unwilling) to concede facts and think in a level-headed fashion and are more interested in scoring polemical points.
That is an issue in itself. Turkey's ambassador to Canada was recently withdrawn over Prime Minister Harper's referral to 1915 as "genocide," a stance that Ottawa has taken, much to the chagrin of Turkey. South of the border, President Obama is likely set to reiterate his personal stance on the issue (affirmative) at the end of April, when a remembrance day by Armenians takes place, and US Presidents traditionally speak about the subject.
Then, there is the nature of Turkish-Armenian relations that have remained foul, symbolically, for a century, but which became acute post-1993 over the Nagorny Karabagh war. This is an enclave within the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, populated now totally by Armenians, which turned into a quasi-kerfuffle between Armenia and Azerbaijan in early 1988. Following 1991, it turned into a full-out war between the enclave, backed by Armenia (and Russia), and Azerbaijan (which also received help from Russia -- go figure).
A fragile ceasefire was imposed in May 1994, but Armenia and Azerbaijan remain technically at war, with skirmishes sometimes taking place. Peace efforts since then have all failed, mainly because Armenia and Nagorny Karabagh's leadership have been more interested in pursuing nationalist policies and catering to the shouts emanating from the Armenian diaspora (think former Armenian President Robert Kocharian versus his predecessor Levon Ter-Petrossian).
Azerbaijan, on the other hand, pumped to the brim with hard and bountiful oil cash, is one of the world's most corrupt states, with a small clique, run first by Heidar Aliyev and now his son, Ilham, controlling the political landscape. The Azerbaijani side of the coin has, in turn, been unwilling to pursue a resolution to the conflict because of domestic political factors that have consistently opposed a reconciliation with the Armenians.
Even now, in the spirit of Turkish-Armenian normalizations, Baku is howling: the status of the Nabucco oil pipeline is at stake, which would reduce the EU's dependence on Russian energy, but which Baku is threatening could be compromised by a shift to the Russians, given that they have already offered to buy Azerbaijani crude at European prices. "Opening the border could lead to tensions in the region and would be contradictory to the interests of Azerbaijan," Azeri Foreign Ministry spokesman Elkhan Polukhov has said.
Finally, the icing on this ziggurat-like cake is Turkey's EU ambitions. Ankara's support for Baku has raised the ire of the folks in Brussels (though, admittedly, it does not take much for them to find issue with Turkey in the best of times), as has its stance on the events of 1915. Turkey's trajectory is also at issue now, a certain 'damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't'-like scenario.
At the same time, it is being pressured by the United States to assist regional peace efforts through its traditional brokerage and go-between efforts at mediating long-standing crises in the region, as between Israel and Syria, and Iran's nuclear ambitions.
This is definitely something to watch, as the stakes are enormous and the issues laden with every kind of explosive you can imagine.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Milo, vi ste kralj!
Elections are all over Europe these days. Slovakia recently had presidential elections, which will have a second round in a run-off vote some time in April. The Czech government collapsed recently, the outcome of which remains uncertain. Macedonia (or 'FYROM' to those sensitive of the name) held presidential elections this past weekend too, as much in a bid to prove to the world its capability of holding free and fair elections independently.
Montenegro is due to have a parliamentary election on Sunday. Several individuals are running as representatives of coalitions or blocs in a bid to try and win the position of government head, though no one questions that the long-standing incumbent, Milo Djukanovic, will win. The man, in one fashion or another, has held the position of Prime Minister and/or President of Montenegro since 1991, making him something of a relic of everything that has happened in the region.
Television, for about one month now, has been allocating certain slots for "political marketing," ostensibly giving all contenders space to voice their views and try to woo would-be voters to select their number on the ballot. Djukanovic's bloc, known as the "Coalition for a European Montenegro," has, by my reckoning, been dominating the scene. It is as if the voting public already knows that he will win. Quite ironic, given that Djukanovic's bloc has been using the slogan of "Sigurno," which means "assurance," in his campaigns.
This report, by contrast, in reporting on the possible closure of the KAP aluminium plant in Podgorica, suggests the Prime Minister called snap polls in a bid to win a victory before the financial crisis became really acute in the country, thereby affecting his popularity. For a country of some 650,000 people, the closure of this plant, along with a large mine, would affect 4,000 workers -- KAP aluminium alone makes up 40% of the country's industrial production.
There is a burgeoning tourism industry, but many owners of coastal hotels and resorts, buoyed by the economic boom following independence in June 2006 that spurred massive renovations, are now wondering how they will pay their creditors given that less tourists will come this summer, owing to the financial crisis worldwide.
Whoever wins the vote -- and my rather unremarkable prediction is that it will most certainly be Djukanovic -- has a lot on their plate. In fact, this is an icky understatement. Other sentiment, however, says it is not a matter of just winning, but that there is no one else but Djukanovic to lead Montenegro at a time like this; he brought the country this far, so why not let him take it a little further, given that the EU and NATO (via Olli Rehm) have been applauding the country's progress thus far.
Montenegro never had a war on its territory. If anything, it was like a sideshow to the other Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, though details are emerging relating to the country's culpability in some crimes and collusion with Belgrade in this regard. It fared remarkably well, and stands poised for a status of incredulity. For now, however, observers will be watching this election and the broader means by which its winners will tread the economic storms looming fast.
Friday, March 20, 2009
"The victims and perpetrators are still among us"
Following the Second World War, occupied Germany wound up being partitioned, albeit gradually, into two distinct entities that became a symbol of Cold War divisions in Europe. There was a democratic, free-market West Germany, as well as a communist, non-democratic and Warsaw Pact East, whose official name was the "German Democratic Republic." Berlin was a divided city.
That basic history masks the other, more serious and trenchant diversions that took place following 1945. As a component of the Soviet Bloc, East Germany had a KGB carbon-copy secret police responsible not only for foreign intelligence gathering but also domestic surveillance. This police force, known as the Stasi (fully, 'Ministerium für Staatssicherheit,' or "Ministry for State Security"), was officially founded in 1950, and was among the most ruthless and brutal of the Eastern Bloc's secret police forces, matched perhaps by the wickedness of Romania's Securitate, or Czechoslovakia's Statna/i Bezpecnost (literally, "State Security").
Nazi hunter and Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal was unsparing in his opinion of the Stasi; he said that they were "worse than the Gestapo." Their surveillance and torture techniques became legendary, as well as the sheer cruelty with which they pressed their agenda. Apparently, a German daily alleged that the Stasi had even partaken in radiating some political opponents, so that they would get cancer within a few years. One out of every fifty East Germans was a Stasi informer, with some estimates stating that this is too conservative a number.
Every post-communist country has had to deal with the particular legacies that emanated from the Cold War, one of them being purging and/or reforming these ex-surveillance agencies known only for their coercion and repressive policies in enforcing communist rule on their populations. The processes, known as lustration, has had mixed results: some countries, like the former East Germany and the Czech Republic, have been vigorous (albeit imperfect), while others, like Romania and Slovakia, were ruled in the 1990s by old-style governments that were unwilling to do so. Others, like Albania, have just begun.
Germany, after reunification, had the double misfortune of not only coming to grips with the Nazi past, but also the Stasi/East German legacy. This last bit remains an issue. Consider this BBC story, which deals with a former, albeit unwilling informer, of the Stasi, who has remained haunted and affected by this past ever since the Berlin Wall came crashing down. This particular woman became a so-called "Romeo spy," tricked into unwittingly handing over West German secrets to the Stasi by being seduced by one of its agents and reassured that her information was being used by pro-peace Western groups.
"It's like an invisible amputation of the soul," this one woman declared. "I am totally alone, I don't have any family, I don't have any friends," but for eleven dogs that she has in her house -- in the Netherlands. After 1990, she was prosecuted and given a suspended sentence and fine, though the agents that cajoled her, and thirty other women, into giving away state secrets were given immunity; to this day, they receive state pensions for their service.
Mind you, Germany has complex, yet very thorough laws on access to information for people affected by the secret police. With a set mandate of operation, the former East German archives enable people to access and read their files, sometimes enabling them to track down their former informers, though this is not sanctioned or officially encouraged. Oxford intellectual Timothy Garton Ash, by his own investigations, confronted those that informed on him when he was in the DDR in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He wrote about them in his book The File. There is now, in Berlin, a Stasi museum -- next time I visit Germany, I will make it a point to check it out.
Some say the Germans have become good at confronting their nasty pasts. The double-whammies of Nazism and Communism are no mean feats to deal with. West Germany went through a period of amnesia throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s about its Nazi past before finally confronting its legacy, through studies of history, popular culture and political will.
Ghosts of the Stasi, however, remain painfully at issue, despite the methodical efficiency of reconciling this dark period. This kind of healing may take a longer time yet to set in.
That basic history masks the other, more serious and trenchant diversions that took place following 1945. As a component of the Soviet Bloc, East Germany had a KGB carbon-copy secret police responsible not only for foreign intelligence gathering but also domestic surveillance. This police force, known as the Stasi (fully, 'Ministerium für Staatssicherheit,' or "Ministry for State Security"), was officially founded in 1950, and was among the most ruthless and brutal of the Eastern Bloc's secret police forces, matched perhaps by the wickedness of Romania's Securitate, or Czechoslovakia's Statna/i Bezpecnost (literally, "State Security").
Nazi hunter and Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal was unsparing in his opinion of the Stasi; he said that they were "worse than the Gestapo." Their surveillance and torture techniques became legendary, as well as the sheer cruelty with which they pressed their agenda. Apparently, a German daily alleged that the Stasi had even partaken in radiating some political opponents, so that they would get cancer within a few years. One out of every fifty East Germans was a Stasi informer, with some estimates stating that this is too conservative a number.
Every post-communist country has had to deal with the particular legacies that emanated from the Cold War, one of them being purging and/or reforming these ex-surveillance agencies known only for their coercion and repressive policies in enforcing communist rule on their populations. The processes, known as lustration, has had mixed results: some countries, like the former East Germany and the Czech Republic, have been vigorous (albeit imperfect), while others, like Romania and Slovakia, were ruled in the 1990s by old-style governments that were unwilling to do so. Others, like Albania, have just begun.
Germany, after reunification, had the double misfortune of not only coming to grips with the Nazi past, but also the Stasi/East German legacy. This last bit remains an issue. Consider this BBC story, which deals with a former, albeit unwilling informer, of the Stasi, who has remained haunted and affected by this past ever since the Berlin Wall came crashing down. This particular woman became a so-called "Romeo spy," tricked into unwittingly handing over West German secrets to the Stasi by being seduced by one of its agents and reassured that her information was being used by pro-peace Western groups.
"It's like an invisible amputation of the soul," this one woman declared. "I am totally alone, I don't have any family, I don't have any friends," but for eleven dogs that she has in her house -- in the Netherlands. After 1990, she was prosecuted and given a suspended sentence and fine, though the agents that cajoled her, and thirty other women, into giving away state secrets were given immunity; to this day, they receive state pensions for their service.
Mind you, Germany has complex, yet very thorough laws on access to information for people affected by the secret police. With a set mandate of operation, the former East German archives enable people to access and read their files, sometimes enabling them to track down their former informers, though this is not sanctioned or officially encouraged. Oxford intellectual Timothy Garton Ash, by his own investigations, confronted those that informed on him when he was in the DDR in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He wrote about them in his book The File. There is now, in Berlin, a Stasi museum -- next time I visit Germany, I will make it a point to check it out.
Some say the Germans have become good at confronting their nasty pasts. The double-whammies of Nazism and Communism are no mean feats to deal with. West Germany went through a period of amnesia throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s about its Nazi past before finally confronting its legacy, through studies of history, popular culture and political will.
Ghosts of the Stasi, however, remain painfully at issue, despite the methodical efficiency of reconciling this dark period. This kind of healing may take a longer time yet to set in.
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