Resources curse, cooperation blesses?

TW: military conflict in Sudan / South Sudan, military conflict in Israel/Palestine

I’ve mentioned before how there’s a long-standing idea within the social sciences that countries with more of certain resources are actually more vulnerable to certain economic and social problems, which is often referred to as the “resource curse“. It’s interesting to keep that idea in mind while watching the political situation along the border of Sudan and South Sudan unfold. Indeed, competition over the various undeveloped oil reserves along their border did initiate what’s essentially a war between the two states. But what’s more, the need to cooperate to allow oil extraction and shipping (and consequently, sales) to occur has been credited with facilitating a ceasefire, as both countries demilitarized the zone around Jau to permit some industrial development.

(A map of the contested areas approximately a year ago, from here. Jau is located northeast of Heglig, marked in red on the map. Over the past year, the border has inched north, as South Sudan has reclaimed many areas with significant support for its government and attractive oil reserves.)

This is particularly interesting to look at in comparison to Israel and Palestine, as the conflict between them shares many similarities with Sudan and South Sudan. Both instances involve a complex conflict between different factions which invoke questions of the areas’ ethnic, religious, and national identities in post-colonial contexts. The most sizable difference – that South Sudan successfully transitioned from resistance movement to separate state while Palestine has yet to – seems likely to be a temporary distinction, as Palestine seems increasingly likely to attain statehood.

But in spite of all those admittedly broad similarities, today, the international press lamented that President Obama, while visiting both Israel and Palestine didn’t draw the Israeli government to the negotiating table or otherwise recast the situation in a way that makes continued settlement and a third intifada less likely. As international interest in forcing a ceasefire between Israel and Palestine has declined, the disincentives against conflict have also diminished, resulting in Israel being led into an even more total state of war. Israel hasn’t had to offer an olive branch in so long, it might have forgotten how.

In light of that, it seems like two pertinent questions should be asked. Firstly, what will happen along the Sudan / South Sudan border when oil production is more established or when extraction has  effectively bled the region dry? The modern Israeli-Palestinian conflict suggests that this basis for peace is innately unsustainable over a long enough term. Ideally, now that some degree of peace has been established, it’s time to work out how to extend that peace.

Secondly, what could provide Israel and Palestine with a common goal with both groups would prioritize over continued conflict? The story in Sudan and South Sudan should give us hope – the circumstances can and eventually will change. Still, it’s worth asking what can be done to hurry that along.

A run down of the wars

TW: Korean War, Philippine-Malaysian tensions, Argentinian “Dirty War”, drone strikes

War was all over the news today, let’s just take a quick assessment of it all.

• Just before joint military exercises between South Korea and the US, North Korea has sent several signals suggesting that they might be interested in reengaging the South in another armed conflict. The last time everyone considered that they were likely to do so (in 2010) more than a few people cited analysis from 2005 (again, when everyone expected something to happen) that suggested huge casualties would be likely if the war did reignite. Buried under all the paranoia is an actually important point: if the war, which technically has only ceased rather than ended, started again in earnest, hundreds of thousands are likely to die. That, among other pieces of evidence, does point towards this being yet another bluff on the part of the North Korea leadership. Unfortunately, there seem to be diminishing returns as North Korea has to increasingly concern China, South Korea, and the US in order to not be easily labeled as only being aggressive to jockey for aid.

• Military conflicts between East Malaysians and militarized Filipin@ groups in the Sabah province have gotten the Philippine state involved now as unaffiliated Filipin@ individuals have been targeted by the Malaysian police. Ironically, exacerbating the land conflict wasn’t the intention of the Sulu Sultanate, the Filipin@ group in question, who simply wanted the regular allowance paid by the Malaysian government for having displaced their government to be raised. As tensions have worsened, that actually seems to be becoming a less likely outcome.

• With the selection of the Archbishop of Argentina to hold papal office, many old wounds about the “Dirty War” in Argentina have been reopened. Was Jorge Bergoglio (now Pope Francis) among the high-ranking Catholics that sought to soften the blow of the military regime by keeping pregnant political prisoners alive, only to kill them after they gave birth? Is his sense of fidelity to Christian principles so thin?

What’s striking is how many of the instigators (or alleged accessory in Pope Francis’ case) were loath to actually initiate or perpetuate conflicts. They didn’t seem to be interested in killing or causing the death of anyone, but their political interests allowed them to risk that, or even cause or participate in it to maintain an unsustainable class division within North Korea, to lobby for greater dispensation from the Malaysian government, and to protect some perceived victims in the midst of state-sponsored killings.

(A Pakistani woman protesting the use of drones in 2011, from here.)

I think that’s an important thing to meditate on, when examining your own beliefs. Would they let you get to the same place as Kim Il-Sung, the Sultanate of Sulu, or Pope Francis?

Why no one is intervening in Syria (yet)

TW: killing of civilians; marginalization of Kurds, Palestinians, and Jews of Ethiopian ancestry; coerced sterilization

Yesterday, Amnesty International posed a question on twitter, or at least seemed to while promoting their most recent report on Syria. Their official account tweeted:

(An Amnesty International tweet.)

That’s a fair question to ask, especially since, as the report claims, Syrians themselves are often asking it. It claims that one Syrian woman who the anonymous research spoke with wanted to know, “Why is the world doing nothing while we continue to be bombed to pieces every day, even inside our homes?”

As near as I can tell, one of the most pressing problems with intervening in Syria is that doing so appears likely to ignite a conflict as complicated and multifaceted as the first “World War” was for Europe. And this time, that would be after almost a century of technological refinements in weaponry. On the other hand, the problem with inaction, unfortunately, is that it seems only to reduce the risk of that outcome – not actually actively prevent it.

(Syria and its neighbors, from here.)

Syria has a geopolitical context – it shares borders with Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and Iraq, as well as a narrow maritime border that wouldn’t be terribly in the case of an intervening force having to enter Syria without land or air support from any of those five countries. Syria also has close ties with Iran, which is also the neighbor of both Turkey and Iraq. Having listed all those connections, let me explain – that is an incredibly diverse slice of the world covered in a mere seven countries. Along with that comes an incredibly diverse slice of on-going international conflicts that have in the past threatened all of the states governing those seven countries with destruction. In short, Syria is at the heart of a powderkeg.

Just to run down the events that have happened recently in that corner of the world:

-The Israeli and Iranian governments have begun speaking as if they are on the verge of starting a massive international war, which could potentially draw US, Chinese, and European support and proxies into the fray in a massive conflict between the “West” and the strongest “non-Western” nations in the world. Intervention by Iran would be read as an advance against Israel. Intervention by Israel or the US would be read as an advance against Iran. The balance of power necessary to prevent that outbreak of such a conflict in part requires that no one intervene in Syria, if not the freezing of the situation in Syria where it is.

-Within Israel, extremist factions have successfully lobbied for even more extensive segregation between Jews and Palestinian Arabs, and the Israeli government has admitted to supporting the coercive sterilization of Jews with Ethiopian ancestry. These adds to the previous months of conflict and violence in Israel and Palestine, which has led to threats of another Intifada (active, potentially armed resistance by Palestinians) and highlighted the continuing conflict within Israeli communities over who qualifies as “properly” or “ideally” Israeli or Jewish. As a result, Israel seems particularly politically unstable at the moment and likely to make choices that are unwise in the long term.

-Turkey, which has long been plagued by undemocratic movements, has experienced a bit of panic over whether Islam has a growing political presence. This seems likely to herald both undemocratic restrictions on free religious expression and the growth of militant Islamism. This is pertinent to Syria as some of the opposition to the government is often couched in religious terms and much of the government’s violence is excused (as undemocratic acts in Turkey have been) as a preventative strategy against militant Islamists. Turkey, to some extent, finds itself fighting the same conflict as neighboring Syria, and is likely to have a stake in the outcome. That fact is complicated by the reality that Turkey has the support of NATO and much of the Western world in a way that Syria doesn’t and thus a trump card to play against Syria if the conflict is either willfully introduced into or accidentally threatens to spill over into Turkey. But Turkey also doesn’t want a destabilized Syria to serve as a training grounds and resupply territory for the increasingly intent Kurdish rebels.

In short, there are multiple ways for the conflict in Syria to ignite a broader religious conflict in the Middle East, to alter the ability of marginalized groups in Israel and Palestine to effectively protest their oppression, and to provide a means of militant Turks who want to guarantee the free expression of devout Muslims and Kurds within Turkey to militarily organize. The risks of intervention are not only that it will fail to actually improve the lives of Syrians, but that it will actively reduce the stability of almost every surrounding country.

But the conflict is already spilling into Iraq, with Syrian forces and anti-regime forces fighting in Iraq (and causing Iraqi civilian casualties). The Iraqi state is stuck in an even more reminiscent position of Syria’s government’s – as a Shia government finding itself in perpetual electoral and military conflict with various anti-government Sunnis. Both have at least some ties to Iran (although Syria’s are much stronger), and unlike Turkey, Iraq doesn’t have the means to have international actors demand that the conflict be prevented from spilling over. With all that in mind, the Iraqi government has started treating the Syrian soldiers injured in its territory. The field of conflict is broadening independent on Turkish, Israeli, Palestinian, and even Iranian interests in keeping Syria’s conflicts contained if not resolving them.

It’s worrisome to think that a better question for non-Syrians to ask themselves in the place of why they haven’t intervened in Syria is whether they will ultimately decide to intervene there and elsewhere in the future as the conflicts spreads.

Let’s catch up on Palestine

TW: indefinite detention, violation of due process, torture, racist violence

The number of politically significant events that occurred in Palestine and Israel over the past weekend is actually staggering, but between the Oscars and numerous other on-goings in the world, they’ve sadly been largely overlooked. I think it’s necessary to be informed about them, so hopefully this will provide a quick exploration of what’s happened so far.

While this isn’t as directly interconnected to the following events as they are to each other, it seems noteworthy that files from 1982 were finally declassified, which revealed that while Ariel Sharon, at that time serving as the Minister of Defense, feared that the Israeli government’s actions in the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres could be legally considered genocide. This joins the fact that independent Israeli investigators tend to pin much higher casualty estimates on the massacres, in some cases determining as many as 3,000 Palestinian civilians then living in Lebanon to have been killed. In short, this reveals that the Israeli state is aware of the severity of its actions and either chooses to ignore their meanings or actively accept them.

The previous day Israel finally provided charges against and summarily convicted Samer Issawi, who had been held without them for over two hundred days – for the vast majority of which he has been on a hunger strike. Apparently he violated the terms of his early release from Israeli custody in 2011 by leaving East Jerusalem, where he lived, to go to the West Bank to fix his car at a particular garage. So, the eight months of him being held without charges have come to a close, but only because his prosecutors worked out something to charge him with.

Another imprisoned Palestinian, Arafat Jaradat, was even less lucky. After being arrested under suspicion of having thrown stones at Israelis on February 18, his body was provided to his family on Saturday. He disappeared into the blackhole of Israeli prisons and didn’t come out alive. His death has stimulated a series of mass protests, fueled by the fact that an autopsy conducted in Israel suggested that he had six different broken bones in his body – suggesting either serious mistreatment while in Israeli custody, or that he was quite purposefully killed. Yesterday, Israel announced that two additional Palestinian detainees, who like Samer Issawi had been protesting their detentions with hunger strikes, would not be provided to a court hearing because they were too weak. The fact that such a decision only extends their time without food was either deliberately ignored or never occurred to the Israeli court.

(On that same day, a Palestinian woman was jumped by a group of Jewish Israelis and beaten in public after a mild argument, from here. Other, Israeli sources suggest that municipal security guards witnessed the attack and did nothing.)

That’s the question that’s shouted by all of these incidents: does the Israeli state realize what it’s doing? And I’m not entirely sure which answer is worse.

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As this post involves extensive discussion of both Israel and Palestine, I should let you know the requirements of comments are much higher. If for any reason I interpret your comments as expressing hostility towards broad political, social, religious, or ethnic groups, they will be deleted. That’s your warning.

Violence in Central and Western Africa

TW: ethnic and regional conflict, civil war, proxy war

I mentioned in one of my summaries of the year that regional conflicts have played a large role in much of Africa over the course of the prior year. 2013 seems to be shaping up to be the year when many of those conflicts turn into full scale civil wars or similar national emergencies.

In Mali, the de facto independent state in the islamist-controlled and predominantly ethnically Tuareg North is now advancing towards the South (sorry the best sources on this are exclusively in French). The neighboring country of Guinea has pledged total support for the official government that only operates in the South, perhaps signalling a willingness to assist in the developing civil war. Burkina Faso and Algeria, which also shared borders with Mali, have also shown interest in the conflict, and might intervene (although their statements so far have suggested that they both prefer to push negotiations rather than participate in armed conflict). Whether Guinea is motivated by the largely untapped mineral wealth of Mali, a desire to contain the islamist pseudo-government, or both, remains unclear but all of those issues will likely complicate how neighboring states and international bodies respond to this conflict. (EDIT: Breaking news – France is now intervening with bombings of Konna to stall islamist progress beyond that city.)

The Central African Republic (CAR) has neither newly discovered mineral resources nor specifically islamist rebels, so the developing civil war has developed without the assurances or interest seen in the case of Mali. This isolation has led to both more cautious rebels and a more cautious government as both are essentially in this on their own. Still, without the same glut of resources, both sides are less likely to accept the offers of the other, so we’ve gotten to the point were thousands of civilians are fleeing and both the rebels and the government seem likely to reengage each other.

(In recent months the Séléka rebels have steadily advanced towards the CAR capital of Bangui. Originally from here.)

In Nigeria, the conflict has regional dimensions like those in Mali and the CAR, but the recent developments seem to only complicate that. Earlier this week, gunmen from the islamist group Boko Haram opened fire on fellow Muslims praying. The sources I can find don’t elaborate on the motives behind the attack, but it’s interesting to note that Boko Haram attacked state institutions about one year ago in the same city, Kano, where the attack this Monday occurred. It seems that the local Muslim population didn’t respond to the all out war the Boko Haram waged on the police and military, and therefore the Boko Haram have expanded their targets to include Muslims they deem too pacifistic. The obvious comparison might be the Shining Path in Peru, who grew tired of their fellow peasants failing to support their revolution and began to target them as well.

In any case, these are all troubling implications for the coming year in several of the evolving conflicts in Africa.