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The Challenges Of Kurdish Nationalism.

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The Kurds have become one of the key players of the Middle East. They have secured autonomy alliances with superpowers and attracted investors to their resource rich region. But, the chances of full  independence range from zero to few for the time being.
The Syrian government appears to have survived the conflict that was more an international war by proxy than a civil war. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey have pursued their own regional and national interests with the United States’ blessing. The Russians, Iranians and Lebanese Hezbollah defended the Syrian Baath regime and the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Asad.

The Kurds, of whom there 30 million, have nationalist ambitions which might render the ‘peace’ more complex than the current war. The Kurds have never had their own State, but they have been living in enclaves located in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Armenia. As the war against Islamic State has ended in the Levant, the Syrian Kurds are hoping to gain significant autonomy from Damascus as part of the spoils of war. But, despite a successful Kurdish referendum in Iraq in September, the Iraqi government has managed to thwart nationalist ambitions. Most Kurds live in Turkey, a NATO member backed by the United States. This is one of the main reasons that the West cannot encourage Kurdish nationalism; it would interfere with the internal politics of an allied State. Conversely, the West’s inability has been compounded by Russian President Putin’s considerable strategic instinct. Let there be no mistake.

The Kurdish Question

The Kurds dream about a united or greater Kurdistan. It’s not clear what shape that vision could take, given there are different conceptions of Kurdistan, depending on the origin (i.e. Iraqi, Syrian, Turkish, Iranian etc.) The common denominator is that none of the hot States will give up sovereignty over parts of their territory willingly. There’s the risk that the aspirations will remain repressed.

Perhaps, the Kurds of Syria may have a chance now of persuading Damascus to allow greater autonomy, given the role they played in the struggle against ISIS and the accords they made with the Russians. As for the Kurds of Iraq, they will have to forego anything more ambitious than the current autonomy framework within an Iraqi State despite the result of the independence referendum held on September 25th of 2017.
The Americans ‘betrayed’ the Kurds, fearing Turkey’s reaction. Ankara argues that an independent Kurdish State on its borders raises the hopes of Kurdish separatists in Turkey. Iran, in turn, has tightened security at the border area.

Meanwhile, Turkey will prevent the Syrian Kurds in the area known as Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan), the related Democratic Unity Party (PYD) and their military arm known as the Popular Protection Units (YPG) to be nothing short of a PKK extension. The Turks have been attacking the YPG as well as ISIS in Syria. Turkey will not stop to obstruct the PYD/YPG unless it can cub its ambitions. (A.B.)

Angola. ‘The Thinker’.

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When we visited the Anthropological Museum of Luanda we were fascinated by a small statue known as ‘The Thinker’, which is the cultural symbol of Angola and to which an evocative apologue is linked.

The National Museum of Anthropology (Museu Nacional de Antropologia), which is located in the Barrio dos Coqueiros of Luanda, is one of the most important in the capital of Angola; it is certainly the oldest, being founded in 1976, just a little less than one year after Angola’s proclamation of independence. The National Museum of Anthropology is a scientific, cultural and educational institution committed to the collection, research, preservation, presentation and spread of Angolan culture in the world.

The most famous of the sculptures exhibited at the Anthropological Museum of Luanda is, beyond any doubt, the 16 cm high statuette, known as ‘The Thinker’, depicting a man with elbows posed on his knees and hands placed on his head, although some scholars think that the sculpture represents  an elderly woman. Much has been written on this thin statuette, which was found in 1937 in Lunda, a central African region inhabited by the Cowke people, an ethnic group.  It is amazing how people are fascinated by both the absolute purity of the lines and the ‘modernity’ of this statuette that reminds us of some masterpieces of great contemporary sculptors.

The hands that hold the back of the skull tightly with a dynamic gesture, symbolize the tight hermeticism of thought, by actually synthesizing the popular idea of the wisdom of the old man among this ethnicity. Cokwe elders are, in fact, considered thinkers and philosophers par excellence, given their habit of meditation and their constant search for etiological, cosmological and cosmogonic elements. The strength and depth of thought of these wise people has been handed down to us through an apologue that tradition links to the ‘Thinker’ image.

It is said that the living copy of this statuette was a very old soba (village chief) who lived in a village called Chitato. He used to complain: “Trees drop their seeds into the ground and so when the die they can be born again, while man is a seed that when placed under the ground does not sprout anymore. All my friends are dead, I’m about to leave and I won’t be able to enjoy the sunlight any more. Why are the stars gloriously eternal and men melancholically mortal?”.

According to the legend, God finally decided to give an answer to this tormenting dilemma. He promised that he would explain everything, as long as a very solid house without doors or windows and with just a narrow entrance was built.
The next day the house was built and in front of the great crowd, God made the sun and the moon enter the house and commanded that a dish with food for each person of the village should be put inside the house. Then God made a man and a dog enter the house and they were given their respective dishes with food. Finally, the small entrance of the house was completely walled up. After doing so, God dismissed all the crowd and told the multitude to return there the next day.

The morning after, the people of the village gathered in front of the walled up house, and God ordered that the entrance that had been closed the previous day be reopened and so all the people, to their astonishment, could verify that the sun and the moon, despite the fact that there were no doors or windows, were not inside the house anymore and that the sun was triumphantly coming up over the horizon. The food rations had been left untouched.
While the man and the dog were inside the house and were finishing eating their food rations, God said, “You, man, and your dog have not been able to cross the walls and get out of the house; you eat and that is why you die; the sun and the moon came out of the house even though it was walled up; they did not touch the food, they disappeared and for this reason they are immortal”.
Pedro Santacruz

 

The Jesuits in Africa. In Good Company.

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The Jesuits in Africa are 1,600, and they work in 34 countries. They are mainly involved in the fields of education, management of natural resources, prevention of AIDS, and assistance to refugees. In addition, they dedicate themselves to the training of the future African leaders.

The Jesuit presence in Africa dates back to 1542 when, two years after the founding of the Society of Jesus by St. Ignatius of Loyola, the first mission was established in Congo. In 1554, some Jesuits were sent to Ethiopia to establish their first contact with the Christians living in that area, while in 1561 they settled in present-day Zimbabwe.
Since then the Jesuit missions have spread throughout the continent, and today the African Conference of Jesuits gathers the Jesuits of seven provinces and two regions of Africa together. The countries of North Africa are part of the provinces of France and of those of the Middle East.

he apostolate of the Society of Jesus in Africa mainly focuses on formation. The so-called formation houses, which are institutes of philosophy and theology, are five in all Africa. These formation centres play a decisive role in understanding the mission of the Society of Jesus in the continent. These institutes provide formation for almost 300 Jesuits and hundreds of students, whether lay or religious of different orders and confessions. Thanks to these initiatives, the Society of Jesus forms the new African leaders according to Christian values, and principles of justice and peace.

Among the formation centres it is worth mentioning two important theological institutes: the Hekima College in Nairobi (Kenya), founded in 1984, and the Theological Institute of the Society of Jesus in Abidjan (Ivory Coast), which opened its portals in 2003, and three Institutes of Philosophy: the Saint Paul Philosophate in Antananarivo (Madagascar ), the Arrupe College in Harare (Zimbabwe) and the Institute Saint Pierre Canisius in Kimwenza, (Democratic Republic of Congo), one of the historical structures of the Jesuits in Africa which was established 1954. In 2000, the faculty was incorporated into the Faculty of Philosophy of the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome.

Social centres, AIDS and refugees

The intense activity of the Jesuits in Africa also includes the social apostolate. After about fifty years of activities, the social centres of the Society of Jesus are currently  re-orientating their commitment. The seven social centres in Chad, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Madagascar, DRC, Zambia and Zimbabwe are adapting their work to the present situation in order to respond to current needs. The Jesuits encourage debates about peace and democracy, economy and governance, conflict and reconciliation. These centres, which are grouped in the Jesuits Africa Social Centres Network, try to mobilize society for the development of the continent.

The Jesuits in Africa are also active in the prevention of AIDS. According to UNAIDS data published in July 2017, Eastern and Southern Africa was in 2016 the region most affected by HIV both in the world and at home, with 19.4 million, the largest number of people living with the virus. In 2016, there were 790,000 new HIV infections, forty-three percent of the global total.

Meanwhile, in Western and Central Africa, in the same year, around 6.1 million people lived with this disease. In response to this situation, the Jesuits established the Jesuit AIDS Network (AJAN) in 2002 to ‘help individuals, families and communities to create a society without HIV’. The network currently operates in Burundi, DRC, Kenya, Madagascar, Togo and Zimbabwe and it develops home assistance projects, provides educational, medical, nutritional and pastoral assistance to all people including orphaned children, vulnerable underage boys and girls and widows. Much of the work focuses on HIV prevention and on information in order to combat the discrimination that is very often  suffered by those who have contracted this disease.

The Jesuits also offer their service to refugees. According to UNHCR, a large number of the 65.6 million people in the world who were forcibly displaced in 2016 were living in the African continent. They were forced to flee their homes because of critical realities such as those in the DRC, the Horn of Africa, the Central African Republic or South Sudan. In 1980, the then General Father, Pedro Arrupe, founded the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS), an international organization whose programmes are found in over 50 countries around the world.

JRS has four regional offices in Africa, in Chad, Kenya, Burundi and South Africa through which the organization serves 15 countries. Most of the workers contributing to the work of JRS work on a voluntary basis; they are Jesuit priests, religious women and men of other orders and lay people. The purpose of JRS is to ‘serve, accompany and defend’ refugees and internally displaced people by helping them to rebuild their own lives and to have hope in the future despite the unexpected and painful flight from their own villages where they had a house and a piece of arable land that allowed them to live.

Social justice

The commitment to the protection of human rights has become a fundamental point of the Jesuits’ mission, especially after the 2008 General Congregation. Forced migration, peace and human rights and, finally, the management of natural and mineral resources are at the centre of the Jesuits’ action in Africa.
The Jesuit Network on Peace and Human Rights in this continent mainly focuses on the situation in the Great Lakes region, which was a theatre of tragic events, such as the Rwandan genocide in 1994, the civil war in Burundi, which began in 1993 and officially ended in 2005, as well as the conflict in the Congolese provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu which is still an open wound in the region.
While Rwanda and Uganda are currently experiencing a relative stability, political instability remains an ongoing concern in Burundi. On 4 September of this year, a U.N. Commission of Inquiry said Burundian officials at the highest level should be held accountable for crimes against humanity, and in DRC, guerrilla groups’ attacks,  some of which are supported or encouraged by Rwanda and Uganda, do not allow  civilians to lead a normal life. Forced population displacements, massacres of civilians and other serious violations of human rights make this area one of the most unstable in the continent. The abuses committed against women and young people by rebels and even soldiers are the order of the day in the region.

Leonard Chiti and Rigobert Minani, two of the Jesuits promoting the Jesuit commitment in Africa, acknowledge that ‘in spite of several regional and international attempts, mainly promoted by the United Nations and the International Conference for the Great Lakes region to bring peace to the region, no great steps forward were made in order to determine and to face the root causes of the conflict, including the  proliferation of illegal arms trafficking’.

The Jesuits, therefore, have promoted a series of initiatives aimed at making investors and those who do business in the region, aware of the direct relations between war and arms proliferation. “Having a vast network of contacts around the world is the  Jesuits’ strong point”, says Fr. Minani. “If we manage to use this potential, we will be able to raise the voice of those who suffer because of the proliferation and trafficking of weapons at the highest levels, in Addis Ababa (seat of AU), in Brussels or Washington. By talking about what happens in the region of the Great Lakes we will be able to contribute to the restoration of peace in the region”.

Natural resources

The vast African natural resources have turned out to be the root cause of the instability of many countries of the continent. The exploitation of resources, in the majority of cases by foreign companies through privileged agreements with local governments, aggravates poverty and causes conflicts, forced population displacements and human rights violations.

Chad’s government, after implementing special revenues sharing systems for five years in order to allocate adequate resources critical for poverty reduction, failed to stick to the original project by cancelling the funds allocated for the population and it increased instead those which flow directly into the  state budget. An example of management of natural resource revenues to the detriment of the population.
‘The process of extraction of natural and mineral resources transcends local and national boundaries. That is why there is need for transnational advisory actions to regulate the sector and make multinational oil and mining companies work with greater transparency’,  the constituent document of the Jesuit Network of Natural and Mineral Resources says. (M.N.)

 

 

Cameroon. Risk Of Secession.

The crisis in the western provinces of Cameroon comes as no surprise. For years it was known that the English speaking peoples in this area were dissatisfied and felt marginalised by the central government. This malcontent was known and it was feared that sooner or later it would explode.

Probably the central government in Yaounde underestimated the risk and, when it decided to act, its harshness unleashed an equally harsh reaction on the part of the local people. The result has been an increase in tension with clashes leaving many dead among both the English speaking citizens and the security forces.

To understand the crisis we must go back in time. The Berlin Conference in 1884 which divided Africa in areas of influence (and had in fact divided the continent between the European powers) and assigned Cameroon to Germany. The country had become a colony of the German Kaiser, like Namibia, Tanzania and Togo.
At the end of the Great War, Germany defeated, France and Great Britain, the victorious powers divided its colonies between themselves.
Cameroon was split in two. The western region was annexed to Nigeria ending up under British influence.

Wheras rest of the country became a French colony. This balance held until 1 January 1960 when French Cameroon gained independence from Paris. In the face of this independence , the English speaking part of Cameroon broke in two. One part remained with Nigeria, the other, with a referendum, chose to reunite with Cameroon. The annexation was based on an agreement which foresaw the creation of a federal state that would allow each of the two components of society to retain its own cultural and linguistic autonomy, but within the country’s unity. And in fact in August 1961, the parliament in Yaoundé approved a federal Constitution which became effective in the September of the same year.

On paper it appeared that integration, or at least co-existence, was feasable. In actual fact, already in the first years after independence the central government began to pass policies of forced unification, centralization of the structures of power and forced assimilation. Policies which culminated in 1972 with the suppression of the federal system, and with it the birth of the United Republic of Cameroon which became in 1984, the Republic of Cameroon.

The annexation process continued and the English speaking citizens felt increasingly marginalised. With time many areas of their autonomy were eroded. And they succeeded in maintaining a certain degree of independence from Yaounde only in educational and juridical matters . In schools English continued to be taught and the courts applied a system of law similar to the British method. An ulterior blow to English speaking autonomy came in October 2016. The government sends a few French speaking teachers to the English speaking provinces and decides to curtail common law.

Strong protests ensue, repressed by just as strong reaction from the police. “President Paul Biya, who has led the country for 35 years, is unaccustomed to dialogue – we are told by Fr Ludovic Lado, a Cameroonian Jesuit and political analyst -, responded to the protest by sending police and army reinforcements. This led to a ferocious repression which, in many cases, exploded in open violation of human rights. Leading members of the English speaking community were sacked suspected of backing the protesters. Some of them were arrested and taken to Yaounde, to be tried on the basis on anti-terrorism laws”.

To respond to the iron fist method a separatist movement was formed and in recent months has become radicalised, polarising further the English speaking and French speaking positions. The grievances of the English speaking citizens are no longer limited to the educational and judicial systems, instead they have gone further to the point of declaring autonomy on 1 October on the part of English speaking regions and the establishment of the Republic of Ambazonia.

A republic which, at the moment is still only on paper. However protests have been intense and the reaction of the security forces even stronger. Tens of people have been killed.
The Yaounde authorities (Cameroon) have issued international warrants of arrest for the fifteen leaders of an English speaking separatist party, the South Cameroon National Council.
According to a local web site, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, self-proclaimed president of the autonomous region, is among the wanted persons.

In a statement released at the beginning of October , Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, United Nations Comissioner for Human Rights, expressed concern about the reaction with which the government handled the peaceful demonstrations of the English speakers. He has asked for an independent inquiry to investigate the number of dead. “We urge the authorities to ensure that the police force prevents the use of force on the part of its officers– he added -. People must be able to exercise their right to assembly peacefully and speak out freely, also through uninterrupted access to the internet”.

The government has in fact blocked the flow of information, restricting or in some cases preventing access to the social networks (Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, etc.). Following the Arab Spring, social networks played a fundamental role in transmitting the password of every revolt . Yaounde, like many African governments, decided to block the server fearing that demonstrations might find a sounding board. Members of the government themselves admitted that the block was ordered to prevent social media from being used “actively to transmit false information to incite members of the public against the state institutions”.

However, what was intended as a temporary measure became permanent. Both provinces are isolated from the social network. The United Nations defined the move an act which tramples the right of freedom of expression. “These restrictions – a UN reports affirms – must cease immediately and the government must guarantee in-depth, impartial and independent inquiry regarding all the accusations of violation of human rights perpetrated during and after the events of 1 October. The government must adopt efficacious measures to pursue and punish all those responsible for these acts of violation”. Condemnation of the violence came also from the African Union, the European Union and the United States of America.

In the face of tension in the English speaking regions the Catholic bishops of the province of Bamenda denounce ‘genocide’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ on the part of the authorities. The local bishops point the finger at the government for in their opinion, “irresponsible use of firearms against disarmed civilians”. “Our people – the Bishops say – have been chased into their homes, some have been arrested, other mutilated and others still beaten to death. We voice our grief for the dead, for the sufferings of the wounded, for those who have lost their homes because of looting and torching and for those concerned about their loved ones who are dispersed or kidnapped”.

Strong words are to be found also in a statement issued by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Cameroon. “No one has the right to kill – We denounce the violence used and we do so with all our energies”. However according to the Bishops of Cameroon, the solution is not secession, but instead greater attention for the diversity which exists in the country. « Cameroon – says archbishop Samuel Kleda of Duala – has a population of 23 million and some people want to create two different states. But many Cameroonians think this is not the solution. There is a situation of injustices which must be addressed by means of dialogue “.

According to Ludovic Lado, the solution to the crisis must be found in international dialogue with international mediation working for a decentralisation of the structures of government. «There is also need of a change of leadership –Lado observes -. The lengthy regime of Biya (35 anni) and its policies are part of the problem in the English speaking provinces. The solution, or part of it, could come from resignation at the end of the mandate (2018). Free elections could favour a renewal of the political class. If he clings to his position, there is a risk of greater tension and more violence ».

Enrico Casale

Philippines. The Killing Fields.

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As the bloody campaign against illegal drugs and crime continues under the present administration, the Catholic Church in the Philippines responds by establishing community-based drug rehabilitation programs, caring for the victims and parents, strengthening the defence and the culture of human rights.

Not since the Marcos dictatorship has human life in the Philippines been so gravely under threat from government policy. Since 30 June, 2016, a bloody campaign against drugs and crime, urged on by President Rodrigo Duterte, has wiped out thousands of lives, mostly of the poor. Almost every night in major urban centres, drug suspects are slain in the streets or in their homes, sometimes along with innocent bystanders, friends, or family members. The Philippine National Police (PNP) has claimed responsibility for more than three thousand of these killings. Even more have been committed by unknown assailants posing as anti-crime vigilantes.
Bishop Pablo Virgilio S. David, the incoming vice-president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), heart-stricken by the mounting mortality in his diocese of Caloocan, which he calls ‘the killing fields of the country’, was one of the first Catholic bishops to denounce the violence.

The Church is at pains in addressing the continuing slaughter of drug suspects. One reason is that the policy is not implemented through legislation but through internal action or inaction on the part of the PNP, and through signals sent to the police, and possibly to self-styled vigilantes, by the PNP leadership and the president.Another difficulty is that much of the killing is perpetrated by ‘unknown assailants’ whose links to the state cannot be easily established. In the absence of undeniable evidence of this link, all that can be asked of the PNP is to reduce the number of suspects killed in its own operations and to press for more efficient investigation of the ‘deaths under investigation’ (Mils).

Ministering to the victims.

The Church’s most systematic intervention to date has been the establishment of community-based drug rehabilitation programs, viewed not only as a form of compassionate pastoral care, but also as a way of reducing the numbers killed. Three dioceses have launched such programs: the Salubong Program in the Diocese of Caloocan; Abot-Kamay Alang-Alang sa Pagbabago (AKAP) in the Diocese of Novaliches; and the Sanlakbay Program in the Archdiocese of Manila.
Each program draws upon the expertise of professional psychologists and counsellors, including the Psychological Association of the Philippines (PAP), the Centre for Family Ministries (CEFAM) of the Society of Jesus and the psychology departments of Catholic schools such as Miriam College, De La Salle University, and the Ateneo de Manila.
Each uses Church volunteers and involves others in the community in various program components, including representatives of other faiths.

A typical rehabilitation program has three components: patient care, family care, and community care. Patient care is directed toward healing the individual drug user and equipping him or her with life and livelihood skills. Family care includes counselling for families of drug users, food subsidies while they attend the programs, subsidies for the children’s education, and livelihood training. Community care tries to organize and strengthen the community against the drug trade, in collaboration with the local government unit (LGU) and the police.

Culture of Human Rights

A second kind of preventive intervention .that the Church has initiated hopes to strengthen the defense and the culture of human rights. Bishop David is working for the establishment of human rights councils for the cities of his diocese.
The Archdiocese of Manila’s Public Affairs Ministry is working with the Commission on Human Rights on an education program for schools, parishes, and urban poor organizations, including the production of videos on various aspects of human rights. The Ministry’s director, Fr. Atilano G. Fajardo, is quick to point out that the problem is not with people unaware of their rights, but with human rights violators.

The Church is also supporting families of the slain – or as Fr. Antonio Labiao, Vicar-General of the Diocese of Novaliches, calls them, ‘orphaned families’. Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo points out that with thousands killed, there must be tens of thousands of  bereaved. Their needs are numerous: for trauma debriefing and counselling, funeral expenses, food and other basic expenses, livelihood, scholarships and school expenses for orphaned children, legal aid if they wish to file cases, sanctuary and resettlement when threatened by the killers or fearful they will be ‘next’.Among the first Catholics to respond to the needs of orphaned families were the Redemptorist priests of Our Mother of Perpetual Help in Baclaran, in the Diocese of Paranaque. They have created occasional income opportunities for family members who participate in the development and maintenance of a public exhibit on the killings.

Prayer for the dead

A fourth intervention is the prayerful or liturgical commemoration of the dead. This commemoration aims not only to give comfort to the families but also to keep alive public awareness of the killings, to cultivate compassion for the victims and their families; and to send the message that the killings are not exempt from moral judgment. The Mass, celebrated by Bishop Pabillo and by Fr. Fajardo, was well attended by representatives of religious congregations, students of religious-run schools, and individual Catholics. Orphaned families had also been invited, but were too frightened then to go public.

More successful at gathering the orphaned families was a Mass organized by HEMA at Our Lady of Victory Church in Malabon on 2 February. Although the presider was Bishop Deogracias Iniguez, emeritus of Caloocan, it was the bereaved who spoke during the time of  the homily, telling their stories to an audience of human rights advocates, religious, and other concerned Catholics. This was followed by a Mass on 2 March at the National Shrine of Our Mother of Perpetual Help in Baclaran, and another on 2 April at Sto. Nino Church in Baran-gay Bagong Silang in Novaliches, where at that time the death toll had hit 250. Bishop Antonio Tobias of the Diocese of Novaliches presided over that Mass and delivered a moving homily on the raising of Lazarus. The next day the bishop went to the police station to confront the police. For weeks after that, says Fr. Sarabia, no one was killed.  On the second  of each month a memorial Mass is held with the bereaved families.

Documenting the killings

A fifth intervention is advocacy. The Redemptorists of Baclaran have set up a memorial exhibit to the killings at their well attended Church, reminding their millions of devotees that true faith demands compassion, denunciation, and action.
Churches all over the Archdiocese of Manila and in other places have put up tarpaulins reminding the faithful that Huwag kang papatay (‘Thou shalt not kill’) has not been struck  from the Ten Commandments.

A final intervention is an investment in the nation’s future. At least one diocese is systematically documenting the killings. The documentation will serve as a dossier which can be eventually used to measure the extent of the slaughter, to file cases against the perpetrators, and to hold those responsible to account.
Catholics who are fighting the Duterte administration’s anti-life solutions to crime may be a minority now, but they are a powerful minority. Their power comes from moral clarity and compassion, from the support of bishops, from their occupation of strategic institutional spaces in the Church, and from their capacity to work with secular groups to advocate for life and to aid the bereaved.

Elenor R.Dioniso

 

 

 

World Day of Peace 2018. Migrants And Refugees: Men And Women In Search Of Peace.

The Message for the World Day of Peace is a reminder that the efforts for intelligent solidarity are the sole antidote, and that “the realism required of international politics” must “avoid surrendering to cynicism and to the globalization of indifference”

“Some consider this [global migrations] a threat. For my part, I ask you to view it with confidence as an opportunity to build peace.” Notwithstanding the analyses, the proposals, and the inspiration for reflection contained in Pope Francis’ Message for the 51st World Day of Peace, the beating heart of his appeal is encompassed in a clearly evangelical phrase, shaped on the prophetic word of Jesus of Nazareth: “You have heard that it was said …. Truly I tell you!” (Cf. Mt 5:21 et seq.).

Some consider migrations a “threat”, Pope Francis urges us to consider them an “opportunity”. Far from being a rhetorical appeal, it is based on a truly global understanding of world developments, of the phenomena we are able to tackle and which deadlocks we risk incurring in.

It requires transforming our gaze, adopting the contemplative vision that is anchored to the harsh reality of everyday life and that embraces it with the same eyes of the Creator who conceived life in abundance for all human beings He created in His image and likeness. In fact, at a superficial glance the migrants – refugees in particular – seem to be linked to peace merely by reason of the war that forces them to flee their lands and their homes.

But “peace” is not only the absence of lethal weapons: it’s a dignified life, hope in a better future, skies open to the horizon of an individual and of his dear ones, especially of the weakest and defenceless ones among them.

Only a “contemplative gaze”, one that penetrates the suffering human heart, guides determined, wise, responsible and intelligent deeds. Only in-depth discernment enables everyone – starting with those responsible for the public good at national and global level – to take action according to the “four mileposts” indicated by the Pontiff: “to welcome, to protect, to promote and to integrate.” Other verbs could come to our minds but these four are addressed to “migrants”, those living human persons with a baggage of suffering and dignity who yearn to be recognised as such and to be welcomed, protected, promoted, integrated as such.

Only in these terms will it be possible to cast off the deceitful and self-justifying division separating those fleeing war and those fleeing hunger or environmental disasters. Indeed, macrothymia, “thinking big”, “foresight”, enables us to embrace the complexities of life and to grasp and pursue pathways of non-obvious solutions.

This passionate and com-passionate gaze –belonging to those who are compassionate and to those who suffer – underlies Pope Francis’ bold proposal for “two international compacts, one for safe, orderly and regular migration and the other for refugees”, to be drafted and approved by the United Nations: Safe, not deadly migrations; orderly, not chaotic; regular, not controlled by traffickers in human beings.

The compacts, writes the Pope, “need to be inspired by compassion, foresight and courage, so as to take advantage of every opportunity to advance the peace-building process.” Only courage can transform potential threats into opportunities, into propitious occasions to make a leap forward on the path of humanization. This will require a tenacious, persevering determination to seek and pursue the common good and not particular interests – including those that place a part of a world against the other – but the Message of the World Day of Peace is a reminder that only the struggles for intelligent solidarity ensure that “the realism required of international politics avoid surrendering to cynicism and to the globalization of indifference.”

Cynicism and indifference can and must be combated by each one of us day by day, thus receiving from the smallest and defenceless ones among us the great gift of recovered humanity.

Father Enzo Bianchi,
The Abbot of the Bose Monastery (Italy)

 

 

Africa. Political Forecast 2018.

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General Elections in Egypt, Sierra Leone, Mali, Cameroon and Democratic Republic of Congo. Possible political instability in South Africa. Crucial year in Gabon.

In North Africa, one of the main challenges is the improvement of the situation in war-torn Libya and more particularly of the situation of the Sub-Saharan migrants who are victims of the slave trade. During 2018, should be implemented a plan launched at the Abidjan EU-Africa summit of the last 29 and 30 November by the European and African Unions and by the U.N. to improve the conditions of migrants and refugees in Libya, to provide them with the appropriate assistance and to facilitate their voluntary repatriation to their countries of origin, as well as durable solutions for refugees.

In Egypt, everyone is focused on the presidential election, scheduled for March or April. The final list of candidates is expected to be published in February 2018. Former Egyptian Prime Minister an ex-air force pilot Ahmed Shafiq, said by last November he planned to run. But there is no certainty, he will be allowed to do so since his hosts, in the United Arab Emirates, a close ally of Egypt, have barred him from traveling. In such circumstances, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi who is expected to seek a second term is considered as the likely winner, by all pundits.

The first local elections since the Jasmin Revolution of 2011, should take place in Tunisia on the 25 March 2018. This is a much awaited event since the town councils were dissolved in 2011 and were replaced by provisional “special delegations” which faced difficulties to manage the main cities of the country, as showed problems in the collection of wastes and deficient infrastructures.

The first scheduled event of the year in Morocco will be the African Nations Championship (CHAN 2018) which will take place between the 12th January and the 4th February. Morocco was a last minute’s choice after the Confederation of African Football, the governing body for soccer in Africa, voted unanimously to award to the Kingdom the tournament, after it confirmed it would be stripping Kenya of the tournament ‘in light of accumulated delays from reports of the various inspection missions conducted in the country.’
In neighbouring Algeria, everyone is expecting President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s announcement that he will run again in 2019, despite his uncertain health condition. Preliminary indications have been given in late 2017, that such should be the scenario, with Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia’s statement that he would support President Bouteflika if the latter wants to run for a fifth term.

In West-Africa, Sierra Leone, general elections will be held on the 7 March 2018 to elect the President, the Parliament and local councils. The three major presidential candidates in the 2018 are current foreign minister Samura Kamara who is the ruling All People’s Congress party candidate, former Sierra Leone military Junta ruler retired Brigadier Julius Maada Bio, who is the candidate of the main opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) and former United Nations senior official Kandeh Yumkella, who is the candidate of the newly formed National Grand Coalition (NGC), formed by disgruntled SLPP former members. One problem is that the election falls outside of the five-year term plus three months limit.

Elections are also scheduled in Mali where the jihadist threat and the separatist movement which struggles for the liberation of the northern Azawad territory are still very present. The presidential election should take place in July and the parliament elections are due in November. The suspense there is, whether the incumbent President, Ibrahim Boubacar Kéita who scored 77.6% in 2013 will be re-elected or not. Over the last months, a number of his allies have defected.

In Guinea-Conakry, local elections are scheduled on the 4 February 2018. They should have been organised in February 2017 but they were postponed, fuelling the anger of the opposition which still demonstrated in September 2017 to urge the Electoral Commission and the government to make the necessary steps to hold these elections. These are likely to take place in a tense situation. During the last quarter of 2017, there were violent demonstrations in Boké, in Western Guinea, where the inhabitants protested against power cuts.

In Eastern Africa, the main event on the agenda is the parliament election next February in Djibouti, which President Ismail Omar Guelleh’s party is likely to win, largely because of the divisions on the opposition side.In Central Africa, parliament and presidential elections are scheduled for the second half of 2018 in Cameroon. By end 2017, ten candidates announced that they would run, including former barrister Akéré Muna and Bernard Ndjonga, who is supported by small farmers associations. The opposition Social Democratic Front is also expected to present one candidate, either its historical leader John Fru Ndi, or the party’s vice-president, Joshua Osih.

Everyone expects 84 years old President Paul Biya to run for another term. The big suspense is, whether or not, the elections can take place in the English-speaking Western part of the country where authorities imposed a curfew in October. The region has become the stage of a cycle of violence and repression, opposing pro-independence activists and the military. It should be also difficult to hold elections in Northern Cameroon, where Boko Haram militants are still active.

The year 2018 will be crucial in neighbouring Gabon, where parliament elections are due in April. In principle, they should have taken place in December 2016, but they had to be postponed, owing to the tense situation that followed the controversial presidential election, which President Ali Bongo’s rival, Jean Ping, described as rigged. There are still clouds on the horizon however. Opposition politicians including Dieudonné Minlama Mintogo are sceptical about the possibilities to organise free and fair elections by April. Several electoral reforms must indeed be implemented beforehand, including a reform of the constitution and of the electoral law, the appointment of an independent electoral commission and the registration of the voters, in little more than three months.

In the DRC, the main issue will be whether the legislative and presidential elections, which were scheduled by the constitution for end 2016, will take place on the 23 December 2018 as announced in November 2017 by the Independent National Electoral Commission. This is the second postponement of the elections which were due to be held by end 2017, according to an agreement sealed by the government and the opposition under the aegis of the Roman Catholic episcopal conference.

The opposition does not believe that President Joseph Kabila genuinely wants to hold them since he is not allowed to run for a third term by the constitution. So far, he has declined to state that he will not run, despite Congolese bishops’ requests.
In Burundi, the main issue will be the consequence of the International Criminal Court’s decision to open a preliminary investigation for crimes against humanity committed since April 2015 by rebels, members of the presidential party Imbonerakure militias and by state agents. The list includes the killing of more than one thousand people, illegal detentions, tortures of thousands of citizens and the displacement of 413,000 refugees. The question is whether the investigation can make progress in a country which withdrew from the ICC in October 2017.

There is also concern about possible political instability in South Africa. President Jacob Zuma, who is facing charges for corruption, might indeed have to resign before the official end of his mandate in late 2019. The succession war is raging within the ANC between Zuma’s ex-wife Nkosazana Dlamani Zuma, who has the support of her ex-husband and ex-trade unionist, Cyril Ramaphosa.

François Misser

 

 

 

 

Solidarity As The Road To Peace: The Indigenous African Model.

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Indigenous Africa offers examples of alternative ways to reach peace. It is the way of truth, social forgiveness, and integration. A reflection from Laurenti Magesa, a Tanzanian theologian.

Peace does not mean the absence of conflict. Except in fables, recorded history offers no credible examples of societies that led perpetual, totally idyllic, tension-free existences, either internally within themselves or in relation to their neighbours.
Conflict is part of human nature. It arises from such emotions as selfishness, anger, revenge and desire for power and control. Every person and society somehow shares in some of these conditions. To transcend conflict constitutes the call to peace and security. But this is not an automatic endeavour. Peace must be constructed on an on-going basis at various levels of society through deliberate procedures.

The question is therefore how, in any given situation, can individuals and communities consciously manage conflict situations that are bound to arise in relationships so that differences do not degenerate into violence? How can human beings contain destructive passions that, in the absence of processes of self and social control, inevitably lead to bloodshed? More positively, how can people transform negative emotions into positive attitudes of forgiveness, concern and care for one another?

There have been several approaches to these perennial questions. Some people and societies still advocate physical force as a way of ‘solving’ conflict situations. This approach is expressed in such philosophies as, ‘If you want peace, prepare for war’ (by the 4th century Roman Publius Flavius Renatus), or ‘Peace can be achieved only by the edge of the sword’, (a maxim of the Swahili people of East Africa). This conviction has formed the dominant stuff of global history. Yet history also shows that the approach has never succeeded in fostering lasting peace.

In the 20th century alone, the world witnessed two major wars. The first (1914-1918) was touted as ‘the war to end all wars’. It did not happen. Soon afterwards, another major global confrontation occurred (1939-1945). Since then, numerous regional and civil wars have created only resentment and desire for revenge between combatants. Nations have, therefore, resorted to manufacturing weapons of mass destruction, ostensibly ‘to keep peace’ by threatening to wipe out the ‘enemy’. But the arms race has not brought the world any nearer to real peace. On the contrary, it has resulted in such horrors as the atomic bomb strikes against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, eventually killing over 200,000 people and, currently, the atrocities in Syria and elsewhere. Thus, the arms race should be described as a form of ‘balance of terror’ where violence is prevented only by ‘fear of mutual annihilation’.

Solidarity as a dynamic spiritual force

Though dominant, violence is nonetheless not the only way towards the management of conflict for the sake of peace. Indigenous Africa offers examples of alternative ways towards this goal and at a much deeper, more permanent level. It is the way of truth, social forgiveness, and integration. The method is intended to lead to human solidarity as the ultimate goal. True peace, in this perspective, comes only through the activation of these combined processes, step by step. Solidarity as a dynamic spiritual force is meant to create all-embracing common interests through the formation of communion of mind and heart between and among previously antagonistic perspectives.
Establishing the relative truth of  a conflict situation is a prerequisite of the process. The goal here is to establish accountability for a ‘mistake or crime committed, whether pre-meditated or accidental.

Admission of a mistake, from the least, such as disrespect, to the gravest, such as murder, happens either by ordinary procedures (voluntary confession) or by supernatural means (divination). It helps the perpetrator to ‘see’ with the eyes, mind and heart the problem created and resolve not to commit further errors.
Confession is necessary because harmony can be rebuilt only if moral responsibility and accountability for breach of social order are accepted. The parties in a situation of conflict must be made to understand that things are not as they should be, and that this affects not only their lives but extends to disturb the entire existence of society by causing physical, moral and spiritual disharmony, an enemy of life, since everything is connected for better or worse.

For life to continue, disorder must be healed, and healing comes through confession and forgiveness. These are demonstrated through established signs, symbols and rituals. The structure of forgiveness usually calls for an offer of compensation to the victim as a sign of repentance on the side of the wrongdoer. Reparation (often symbolic) also serves as a symbol of readiness to re-establish broken harmony and order.Archbishop John Baptist Odama affirms with reference to the Mato Oput ritual among the Acholi of Uganda, for example, that when an offender demonstrates genuine repentance, the offended “would have no option but to forgive in good faith”. A symbol of repentance must not be rejected at the risk of reversing responsibility for chaos from the original offender to the recalcitrant victim.

Rituals of reconciliation are here not intended for retribution but for the desired creation – on a permanent basis – of unity, harmony and solidarity. For this is what peace is understood to be. Anything less is a failure in reconciliation. For successful conflict resolution and peace, rituals must see to it that the offender is re-integrated into harmonious relationships as was the case before their breakdown so that together again the life of the community in question is stronger. All rituals are intended to say one thing to all parties concerned: “we are one community”, and if so, no one should harm oneself.
Again, awareness of this fact by all concerned constitutes the concept of peace in indigenous Africa. Being on constant watch to preserve the ritually re-established social harmony is the duty of everyone in the community. Any intention, word of deed that leads yet again to the breach of solidarity becomes both criminal and blasphemous.

Integration implies total, unreserved acceptance of the other, without suspicion or fear of their intentions. That is why this ultimate goal is invariably sealed by a ritual meal and/or drink by everyone collectively. Only people brought together by bonds of mutual love, understanding and respect, who are, therefore ‘relatives and friends’, do share meals in indigenous Africa. The act indicates purity of intention towards one another. Eating with enemies cannot happen while the hostility lasts because it can be dangerous to life; but sharing a meal, the source of life’s sustenance, is life itself.

Theological validation

The road towards sincere Christian social and spiritual reconciliation and peace follows exactly the same logic. If, as James writes in his Epistle, the cause of fights and quarrels among people are their internal desires that are not properly managed (James 4:1-2), then this fact needs to be acknowledged and deliberate action taken to prevent murderous violence from ensuing. From scriptural teaching, peace is a question of practical, existential spirituality where the attitude of forgiveness and acceptance is indispensable (e.g., Mt. 5:39-48, 18:21-22, Lk. 6:29-30). After all, mercy is what God continually shows toward errant humanity, constantly inviting human beings to communion with God.

For Catholic Christians, the supreme symbol of integration into divinity is the Eucharist, in other words, the Christian Mato Oput ritual. Holy Communion is holy precisely because it is compassionate, integrative and unitive. The Eucharistic ritual is not a naive exercise but truly the way to genuine and lasting peace with God and neighbour.
Peace is achieved through awareness and acknowledgment of the truth of conflict, readiness to ask, give and receive forgiveness, and genuine integration of the repentant other into the integrity of ‘human’ togetherness. African indigenous reconciliation perceptions and rituals provide a window towards global peace understood and not merely absence of war.

 

 

 

 

Africa’s Hotspots in 2018.

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In 2018 several African states will have to face a series of challenges at the security level. In some cases, their governments will have to manage different threats simultaneously. Some of these threats have been present for different years. And these issues will be influenced by social and economic issues.

In 2018 Libya’s crisis will put pressure on its neighbors, on Egypt in particular. Cairo authorities will have to deal with the extremist groups active in Libya which cross the border and with those that have an internal origin, like the Egyptian branch of the Islamic State. On the other side, the meddling of some external players (like Egypt or France) in Libya’s internal affairs (to support one of the armed militias vying for power) will also fuel Libyan chaos.

Also Algeria and Tunisia will have to cope with the consequences of what happens in Libya, but likely they will be more influenced by their own dynamics. This is true especially for Algeria, which will have to solve the problems of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s health and capability to rule. Malian authorities do not control some areas in the North of their country. In these zones jihadists groups (linked to Al Qaeda) and ethnic or tribal militias fight (but in some cases cooperate) for the possession of the territory. With the help of foreign troops Bamako is trying to retake those zones, but at least in the short term instability will go on.

Fire at the center

The central part of Africa will be an area of great turmoil where the fragility of some states will have consequences on their neighbors. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is still in turmoil. Different militias (in some cases coming from neighboring states) still fight Congolese security forces, commit abuses on the population and pillage the natural resources of the country. But the real crisis is political.

President Joseph Kabila and his opponents are playing a risky chess game with the intervention of external players (UN, USA, China, etc.), who support one of the two fronts. The ultimate goal is rule over one of the giants of the continent. The next presidential elections are scheduled in December 2018. Since they have been delayed different times, it is not sure that they will be held. In any case, political tension will increase together with unrest in the main cities. In Central African Republic different armed groups still fight in different areas, the ongoing peace process notwithstanding. The institutions are not capable of guaranteeing minimal public services, the most important being security. The different militias exploit and worsen the ethnical fractures that the civil war created and some of them could even try to create an autonomous state. The components of the society who are working for an appeasement face enormous challenges.
The Republic of Congo, close to both of the aforementioned states, will have to cope with the effects of their instability and manage the low-level insurgency in the Pool region lead by militia leader Frédéric Bintsamou (known as Pasteur Ntumi) and its Ninjas. Even if it is split into two competing factions, the jihadist group Boko Haram is still capable of organizing terrorist attacks in the Northern states of Nigeria, in Northern Cameroon and in other countries of the Lake Chad basin.

Boko Haram apparently succeeded in surviving the offensive by Nigerian and international security forces. In other areas of Nigeria, the risk of terrorist attacks by groups operating in the Niger Delta and the issue of autonomist movements have yet to be managed successfully by the Abuja government.
In Cameroon the terrorist attacks are not the only security problem. There is also the increasing tension (and in some cases violence) in the Western regions. The English-speaking minority is protesting the perceived discriminations by the authorities. Some sectors of this community declared the independence of the so-called Republic of Ambazonia on 1 October 2017. In the background there is the issue of the political future of President Paul Biya.

Horn of instability

Also in the Horn of Africa there are areas of crisis. Despite some improvements, Somalia is still not a fully functional state. Al Shabaab, a Somali Jihadist group with links to Al Qaeda, has some influence on different swaths of Somalian territory. Apparently, one of its factions split and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

And there is the issue of Somaliland, a territory that is trying to become independent while Puntland, another territory that wanted to be independent, chose to remain an autonomous entity within Somalia. In Ethiopia tensions among different ethnic groups (especially the Oromos and Somalis) and between them and the regime (led by the Tigray people) are increasing, the repression from security forces notwithstanding. In the background, there are also the dispute with Egypt about the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Nile River and the threat from Al Shabaab. Addis Ababa will also have to deal with Eritrea, a regime with its own problems. The risk of a full-scale conflict between the two states is low, but skirmishes on the border are possible. In Kenya the contested 2017 presidential election will continue to produce its effects on the security situation.

The NASA (National Super Alliance) opposition coalition, led by Raila Odinga, at this moment does not recognize Uhuru Kenyatta as the winner of the presidential election and, therefore, as the legitimate chief of state. It seems that NASA will keep on with its campaign of toppling the government through street protests (mimicking the ‘Arab Spring’). These dynamics are increasingly worsening the ethnic relations since Kenyatta is Kikuyu while Odinga is Luo. Al Shabaab is a threat also for Kenya. Both South Sudan and Sudan will have to resolve their internal conflicts and, at the same time, their border dispute. In Sudan the Darfur conflict has apparently lost traction in 2017, but it is not completely ended. Khartoum has to take into consideration what happens in Central African Republic, since some Sudanese armed groups have their rear bases there.

Fear at the top

Another element of instability is the aftermath of the ‘eviction’ of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. In November 2017, after 37 years in power, Mugabe was basically chased out by the armed forces and his former vice-president, Emmerson Mnangagwa became the temporary chief of state. The 93 year-old Mugabe was toppled by the very same men that helped him to stay on the top. What was in reality a coup orchestrated by the military could push the people of other African states to try to change their governments from the street.

According to press reports, some presidents who have been in power for several years and tried to secure their political future by changing their constitutions are getting worried. Their security apparatuses, which let them rule for all these years, could decide to please the increasingly hostile public opinion and overthrow their leaders. Among them there are Cameroon’s Paul Biya, Congo’s Denis Sassou Nguesso, Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang, but also the scions of political dynasties, like Gabon’s Ali Bongo and Togo’s Faure Gnassingbé are considered to be at risk. What happened in Zimbabwe could encourage opposition parties and civil activists throughout Africa.

Andrea Carbonari

 

Asia 2018. In The Shadow Of Kim.

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If on the one hand Asia looks forward to 2018 with confidence, on the other there are signs of crisis both in the form of the slowing down and restructuring of the economy in several countries and tensions in the Korean peninsula and elsewhere.

Sustained growth in the entire region will again be led most of all by the emerging countries: China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines. With a gross domestic product close to thirty billion dollars, Pacific Asia is becoming the largest trade area in the world, opening up the possibility of further expansion in initiatives and investment. This ought to contribute also in 2018 to the reduction of poverty, the creation of jobs and to the incentive for economic growth. Most of all it helps – and this is the main challenge in 2018 – to develop the RECI (Regional Economic Cooperation and Integration).
The situation is on the whole positive but does not exclude unknowns which partly depend upon the overall regional strategic conditions but also upon the uncertainties imposed by electoral returns on governments.

In the Philippines, for example, strong economic growth runs the risk of contrasts by the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte. Abuses, dictatorial tendencies, economic inconsistencies and relations with its ally the United States and its ever closer strategic and opportunistic relations with China, put pressure on its economy and development and place a burden on the diaspora of ten million of its citizens who increase the gross national product of the country with an essential flow of money. At the same time, the Philippines is the leading country in the tensions in the South China Sea which Peking claims for itself, though opposed by half a dozen countries. These tensions and the danger of an escalation will also be there in 2018.

In the same area, half of the ten countries that make up ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Countries) which celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in October 2017 will see significant electoral returns. This includes Indonesia where local elections will indicate the country’s political tendency and the degree of satisfaction of the largest Moslem country in the world with an administration led by the reformist president Joko Widodo.
Indonesia is certainly worth observing for its role as a bridge between modernity and tolerance and Islamist tensions, a role increasingly prominent in containing fears of contagion by armed fundamentalism from the Middle East in a strategic area of Asia that includes Indonesia, the Southern Philippines and Southern Thailand.

The August elections will be decisive both for the stability of the country and for the dominion, unbroken since independence, of UMNO (United Malay National Organization), whose leader and premier Najib Razak is now struggling to gain the agreement of his entire party for his policies. Scandals, corruption and manoeuvres contrary to freedom and civil rights have undermined his credibility. A decisive factor in view of the elections is the chief adversary of Najib, his nemesis for the past fifteen years, Anwar Ibrahim. The latter could be released from prison in May and, while in opposition, take over the leadership denied him in the 2013 elections. Another factor could be the support of the former prime minister, the ninety two-year-old Mahathir Mohamad, who was in power up to 2003, and went into opposition in the ranks of the Pakatan Harapan coalition led by the wife of Ibrahim, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail.

In Cambodia, parliamentary elections will be held on 29 July but the Cambodian People’s Party led by strong man prime minister Hun Sen may run without opposition. In 2017, the moves that led successively to the voluntary exile of Sam Rainsy, founder of the San Rainsy Party for the national salvation of Cambodia; the deprival of legal status of his second in command Kem Sokha who was the focal point of opposition until his arrest on 2 September, the campaign of aggression that forced his wife to flee the country and, finally, the start of the legal process to eventually dissolve the opposition party, are stages of a process with an obvious purpose.

The advance of the opposition in the politics of 2013 still carries weight. In that year they showed how opposition to the all-powerful Hun Sen was transferred from the streets to Parliament.
The sixteen million Cambodians still suffer from the dark years of the Khmer Rouge, from pacification and reconstruction, and the majority, even after decades, have no share in prosperity or acceptable working conditions but are in danger of finding themselves with no political representatives in an electoral game that may well take to the streets with unpredictable results. Diplomacy and international organisations have been mobilised to moderate what seems to be the final offensive of the prime minister against the opposition but, until now, this has only led to the tightening of the embrace of Hun Sen and Peking.

Thailand. The military Party.

Again, on the theme of elections, but with the background of a military regime that follows its own course of increasingly vast and radical control of the country, with forms of democracy for the benefit of diplomacy and its own economic interests, we have only to look at Thailand. Though they cannot be taken for granted after the previous postponements and are already marked as possibly being held in 2019 to stick to procedures that increase delays to such an extent that it is impossible to keep to the planned schedule, the elections are, for the present, scheduled for November, 2018.

All independent observers agree that the elections may never be held and will be held only if the military and the power groups behind them are certain to win. Whether this will happen, further blocking any political activity so much as to render correct elections a practical impossibility, by means of post-vote sleight of hand or, more probably, by creating a ‘Military Party’, is still to be seen. With the cremation on 27 October last year of the king Rama IX, after a year of mourning, one of the main motivations for the coup of May 2014, the peaceful transition of the monarchy, disappeared.

The other motivations summed up in the simple slogan ‘restore happiness to the people’, in the opinion of many, delegitimised a regime that pursues policies of censure, arbitrary arrest, the suppression of all criticism, the imposition of initiatives of ‘development’ opposed by the local population and by ecologists, and the purchase of arms, including heavy weapons, in quantities never before witnessed in the country.

Seeing all this, we may foresee, even without a definitive solution, that in the year 2018 the question of the Rohyngya will play a decisive role in Myanmar – especially due to international relations. Only time will tell if these people who follow the faith of Islam, who are denied citizenship and are subjected to persecution bordering on genocide by the armed forces and nationalist groups, some of which under Buddhist influence, will be allowed to return from the refugee camps of Bangladesh and from the even more distant diaspora communities. One thing is certain.

The credibility of the country, whether capital and investment will come from countries other than its traditional allies China and Russia or, significantly, of the government in effect guided by Aung San Suu Kyi, will very much depend on the destiny of this ethnic group called the Rohyngya. Myanmar was strongly criticised for its reluctance to defend the rights of the Rohyngya to security and a homeland during the crisis that began on 25 August, 2017 resulting in the flight of more than 600,000 people forced to flee by an indiscriminate and brutal military campaign widely condemned by the global community, even if it was sparked off by incursions of armed Rohyngya militants into Myanmar. The 27-30 September visit of Pope Francis, as well as his following visit to Bangladesh, brought their plight to the fore, initiated a process of recognising their condition and increased pressure on the Myanmar government and military to reach a final solution.

Afghanistan. War against the Taliban

Afghanistan is to go to the polls on 7 July, after the parliamentary elections planned for autumn 2016 were cancelled due to inadequate electoral laws. Since then, the process has been marked by efforts to hold elections soon which would restore greater stability to a country engaged in a protracted war against the Taliban and struggling with the challenges of development. Since the dissolution of parliament in June 2015, all laws have been passed by presidential decree.

An ally of the Afghan government and increasingly aiming to open up to foreign initiatives that will increase employment, wealth and technological development, India looks forward to a time of innovation and the consolidation of the benefits gained in recent years. In particular, the political and economic policies created by the nationalist government led by Narendra Modi – including areas of coercion such as the policy of reducing the amount of cash in circulation and the introduction, where possible, of electronic payments and transactions – place the country in a prospective of competition with the great China but also of complementarity with its neighbour. Modi is banking on innovation and a remarkably young population to lay the foundations of a process which has ample possibilities of being realised, but which depends on innovative policies and internal and regional stability even more than China does.

A further challenge is the need to overcome the contradictions within the country such as discrimination, corruption and illegal trade and to achieve the egalitarian participation by ethnic, social and religious minorities in the life of the nation.
In the Far East, while Japan goes ahead with its expectations that with the abdication of the emperor planned for the spring of 2019, the first for more than two centuries, pressure will grow to transform into welfare and the re-launching of employment the hitherto see-sawing results of the policies of the government. Abenomics. However, there will also be more pressure from the Liberal-Democratic Party and the executive led by Shinzo Abe for a constitutional amendment that will allow the forces of self-defence to operate abroad and, perhaps, to open the doors to nuclear war if the Korean threat were to be concretised in acts of war.

North Korean. A negotiated solution.

The unknowns in the situation of the Korean peninsula run the risk of weighing heavily on all the region with options that go from an implosion of the North Korean regime to open war that would not only create a scenario of devastation but would be an economic burden on a vital area of the world and with unforeseeable effects on global connections. Lastly, a negotiated solution which, to the contrary, would augur the cooperation and growth of the leading regional countries.
Finally The People’s Republic of China will live in the shadow of the Communist Party Congress which in October confirmed the unprecedented power and the policies of president Xi Jinping. This presupposes a year of reforms to the financial system, of commitment against corruption and bribery in the party and in the State, of elements non-functional to the present administration, to the expansion of consumption and welfare, so as to avoid reactions to the announced policy of the reduction of inefficient public companies. It will follow the two-track system of affirming its supremacy (diplomatic and strategic) in the East and its participation in international affairs. This depends upon growth of more than six per cent tied to the reduction of speculation that endangers the entire system and on the required expansion of internal consumption.

Stefano Vecchia

 

The Kurds’ History.

The Kurds and their struggle have suffered because of geographical and cultural fragmentation first and, later, their political and cultural disparities.

The Kurds have become all too aware that the international community remains hostile to their independence project. It would take nothing short of a total reversal of the borders inherited from the colonial order to achieve progress – and even then, Iran would object. The PKK in Turkey has paid the highest price. It emerged during the 1980s and pushed the notion that armed struggle would lead to the fulfillment of a greater Kurdistan.

But, since then, the only experiment that has yielded any viable autonomy has been Iraq. But, even there it took Saddam Hussein’s gross strategic miscalculations, the First Gulf War of 1991 and the Anglo-American invasion of 2003 to bring it about. The chances of anything diverging from the autonomy pattern in the post-ISIS Middle East are as slim as ever.

There an estimated 30-35 million Kurds and they live in the mountains that join present day Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Armenia. They have Indo-European origins and speak a language related to Persian, now making up the fourth most populous nation/ethnic group in the Middle East. Yet, despite a sense of Kurdish nationalism, they have never had a State of their own. Thus, their nationalism has been repressed. It has also been divided as Nation States have consolidated their borders, carving up what would have been the Kurdish nation under various areas of influence and control.

Kurdish history is characterized by nomadism. The Kurds wondered the plains of Mesopotamia, practicing sheepherding in the plateaus ranging from present day southeastern Turkey to southwestern Armenia. In a sense, they ‘clashed’ with the urban settlers and farmers and occasionally with the Arab nomads who lived to their south. They were the Indo-European equivalent to the Semitic Bedouin. Some say the Kurds are the ‘Bedouin’ of Persia. Most Kurds are Sunni Muslims and they can count one of the greatest heroes of Islam, Salah al-Din (Saladin). Born in Tikrit, Iraq, he founded the Fatimid Dynasty in 1171 and defeated the Crusaders in the Holy Land in 1180.

There is no unified Kurdish language or writing. But there are two main dialects, which are similar to each other. Kurmandji, is the main dialect and it’s the one that Syrian and Turkish Kurds speak. It is also spoken in some areas of northern Iranian and Iraqi Kurdistan. But in the southern areas, the prevailing dialect is Sorani, which uses the Arabic alphabet.
Some trace the concept of a ‘Kurdistan’ to the tenth century, when the first independent Kurdish principalities appeared as the Abbasid empire suffered one of its periods of decline. It’s important to recognize that the Kurds have the feeling of belonging to a distinct people, who consider themselves the descendants of the Medes (close to the Persians). In 1596, the Sharafnama, ‘The Book of Honor’, written in Persian, consecrated the concept of a Kurdish nation pursuing unity.

The problem of Kurdish territorial sovereignty starts when the Ottoman Empire breaks up at the end of WW1. The Treaty of Sevres of August 1920 envisaged a small but independent and sovereign Kurdish within the borders of the Anatolian peninsula, to be delineated by the League of Nations (precursor of the United Nations). The Ottoman Parliament refused to ratify the agreement and while the outgoing Sultan Mehmet VI may have accepted the Sevres provisions, Turkey’s rising star, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk rejected the agreement. By 1923, the Kurds lost all hopes for a State as the land allotted to them on the Sevres map would now be split between the new states of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and even Iran.

Ataturk’s Turkey had managed to, more or less, integrate the Kurds within the State despite some important rebellions early on. Meanwhile, in Iran, Qazi Muhammad formed the Kurdish democratic party with the support of the Soviet Union. On January 22, 1946, Qazi proclaimed the formation of a Kurdish people’s republic, putting its capital at Mahabad in present-day northwestern Iran. But as the USSR retreated from Iran, Imperial Iranian troops reconquered the area and the Shah ordered the Kurdish rebels’ political leaders, including President Qazi Muhammad. Since the 1960’s, there have been successive Kurdish rebellions or wars in Iran, Iraq and Turkey. But, in Syria, apart from a rebellion in the northern city of Qamishli in 2004, the Kurds took up arms against the regime only in 2012, when they formed the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria (DFNS), better known as Rojava, a veritable autonomous Kurdish region.

But, Kurdish nationalism, supressed in Iraq, Iran and Syria burst on the scene in the early 1980’s after brewing in the previous decades. The Soviets decided to destabilize Turkey, a NATO country, by leveraging their influence over the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) led and founded by Abdullah Ocalan. In 1984, the PKK began a campaign of armed conflict, which may be seen as a precursor to their campaign against the Syrian government since 2011. In the early 1980’s, the PKK attacked government and civilians Turkey, but also in Iraq, Iran, and Turkey, aiming to establish an independent Kurdish state.

Clashes between Kurdish guerrilla and Turkish government forces killed as many as 30,000 people between 1984 and 1993. Alarmed by the fact that Kurds in Iraq have gained autonomy, they fear autonomy for Syria’s Kurds and fear that Turkish Kurds will be won over.

In general, Kurds have resided in countries that have both refused to give up the parts of their territory and have also denied the very existence of a Kurdish national identity, blocking political processes to this effect. Thus, the Kurds have often felt compelled to take up arms against the State.  Perhaps the episode that cemented the Kurdish question in the collective imagination, especially in the West, occurred in 1988, the Iraqi army attacked the civilian population of the Kurdish city of Halabja, in Sulaimaniya province from March 16 to 19, 1988, killing some 5,000.

The attack occurred in the context of the Iran-Iraq war, after the city fell to the control of the now famous peshmerga led by Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Talabani was the President of Iraq from 2005 to 2014. After Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003, the Kurds were among the few to benefit and have enjoyed more autonomy in the context of the Regional Government of Kurdistan, which administers the three provinces of Dohuk, Irbil and Sulaimaniya.

Reflecting their different ‘host’ States where Kurds and respective ideological/political orientation, there are five main Kurdish entities contributing to the struggle for sovereignty. In Iraq, there are the Democratic Party of Kurdistan (PDK) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). In Iran, there are the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan and the Party for the Freedom of Kurdistan (PJAK) in Iran. In Syria, there is the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which also was one of the main contributors to the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which fought against ISIS in the past few years.

As for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey, it’s the one Kurdish party that still pursues an armed struggle and Marxism. Given its role in challenging the Turkish Republic, the West has opposed the PKK, which has been accused of supporting terrorism.
The clear majority of Kurds are Sunni Muslims (80%). The remainder of the Muslim Kurds profess Shiism and Alevism in Turkey. Some two thirds of the Kurds in Iran are Sunni, making them a ‘double-minority’, they are ethnically and religiously different than the rest of the population, making them vulnerable targets for recurrent persecution in the Islamic Republic. There are also Christian Kurds, including Catholics, Assyrians, Chaldeans and Syriacs. In Iraqi Kurdistan, Christians are estimated to number 150,000. (A.B.)

 

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