Starting Points: internal conflict

Showing posts with label internal conflict. Show all posts

Jun 2, 2010

The collateral damage from Israel's raid

Image by wallyg via Flickr

By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, June 2, 2010; A15

For American Jews, Israel's catastrophic misadventure on the high seas this weekend has only deepened the chasm that increasingly splits them into two camps. On the Web site of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which represents this nation's aging Jewish establishment, the story on the deadly encounter is headlined "Radical Hamas Supporters Beat, Stab Israeli Soldiers." The deaths of nine people protesting Israel's blockade of Gaza don't even rate a sub-headline.

By contrast, the Web site of J Street, the American Jewish group that actively supports a two-state solution for the Middle East and that criticizes Israeli and Palestinian efforts to thwart such a solution, reflects a far different sensibility. The calamity, J Street writes, "is in part a consequence of the ongoing counterproductive Israeli blockade of Gaza." And on the Web site of Americans for Peace Now, another liberal Zionist group allied with the Israeli peace movement, the Israeli naval action is termed "a new low point in the way [Israel] chose to contend with its domestic and external policy dissidents."

Israel's leaders, says Debra DeLee, president of Americans for Peace Now, increasingly characterize dissent as terrorism. "We hear terms like 'economic terrorism' used to describe a Palestinian Authority effort to boycott products made in Israeli settlements, 'popular terror' to describe nonviolent protest and 'cultural terror' to describe pressure on international artists to cancel appearances in Israel."

These opposing perspectives reflect a genuine rift within the American Jewish community -- or, perhaps, between American Jewry's two increasingly distinct communities. On one side are the venerable Jewish organizations unwilling to criticize the Israeli government for its increasing elevation of ethnocentricity over democracy; Orthodox Jews for whom such ethnocentricity is often central to their lives; and the small, hardy band of neoconservatives for whom this fight over Israel's character is just one more front in their ongoing war against fellow Jews whose liberalism drives them batty.

On the other side are a growing number of those Jewish liberals and a clear majority of younger American Jews. Former New Republic editor Peter Beinart published an important essay on this generational rift in the June 10 issue of the New York Review of Books. He begins with an account of focus groups that Republican pollster Frank Luntz held with American Jewish college students in 2003, in which it became quickly apparent that their thoughts, even as they discussed their Jewishness, seldom if ever turned to Israel. The only Zionism that the students could support, writes Beinart, was one "that recognized Palestinians as deserving of dignity and capable of peace, and they were quite willing to condemn an Israeli government that did not share those beliefs." They held, in short, the abiding beliefs of liberal American Jews in human rights, multiculturalism and skepticism toward military solutions, "and in their innocence," writes Beinart, "they did not realize that they were supposed to shed those values when it came to Israel."

These college students, however, are not the only young American Jews. A 2006 poll sponsored by the American Jewish Committee showed that while 60 percent of non-Orthodox American Jews under 40 backed a Palestinian state, just 25 percent of their Orthodox counterparts did. "Particularly in the younger generations," Beinart concludes, "fewer and fewer American Jewish liberals are Zionists; fewer and fewer American Jewish Zionists are liberal."

The roots of American Jewish Zionism, of course, are almost entirely liberal. Consider the career of David Ginsburg, the Washington attorney who died May 23 at age 98 with one of the most stellar liberal résumés of the 20th century. A young New Deal lawyer who clerked for Justice William O. Douglas, Ginsburg helped found Americans for Democratic Action, authored the Kerner Commission report calling for far greater attention to the needs of black America -- and as counsel for the Jewish Agency (which represented the mainstream Jewish organizations in pre-1948 Palestine) played a key role in securing U.S. recognition for the new Israeli state.

The David Ginsburgs of today, however, have feelings toward Israel that are understandably more conflicted. For the past 43 years, Israel has occupied the Palestinian West Bank, building settlements there that reduce the Palestinian sphere to a series of Bantustans. As the settlers, the Orthodox and Russian immigrants have backed policies that have marginalized Palestinians within and outside of Israel, the democratic character of this once democratic socialist nation has diminished. A nation that bans Noam Chomsky at the border, lest he lecture on Palestinian rights, is no longer one that Louis Brandeis -- a leading figure in both American liberalism and American Zionism for the first half of the last century -- would necessarily embrace. And with each passing day, his heirs -- with good reason -- grow ever more estranged.

meyersonh@washpost.com

Dec 22, 2009

Al-Shabab Militants Divided over Tactics, Foreign Control

A rising dispute between militants in Somalia may have split the country's al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab group into two factions. Reports say the suicide bombing at a Mogadishu hotel earlier this month deepened divisions between an al-Shabab leader closely aligned with foreigners and another opposed to foreigners dictating the group's agenda.

Alisha Ryu | Nairobi 22 December 2009

Photo: AFP

Somali man is carried away from scene of suicide bomb attack during university student graduation ceremony at a local hotel in Mogadishu, 3 Dec 2009

Reports say a dispute has been simmering for months between the Mogadishu-based ultra-hardline al-Shabab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane, also known as Abu Zubayr, and Muktar Robow Abu Mansour, a leader based in the Bay region, southwest of Mogadishu.

Godane, who came to power after the death of al-Shabab founder Aden Hashi Ayro in a U.S. missile strike in May 2008, is firmly committed to the idea of using al-Qaida-trained foreign fighters to help al-Shabab violently overthrow Somalia's U.N.-backed transitional government and establish an Islamic caliphate in Somalia. Robow is reported to be in favor of engaging in talks with al-Shabab rivals and maintaining a popular backing for the militant group.

International Crisis Group, Horn of Africa analyst Rashid Abdi says al-Shabab has a decentralized leadership structure that has been vulnerable to dissent.

"It has serious trouble in the sense that those who are wedded to the idea of a permanent global jihad with Somalia as a staging post are now in the driver's seat," he said. "Foreign jihadis are the ones who are calling the shots. They are the ones who are behind the waves of suicide bombings, which have caused horrific civilian casualties. And increasingly, they are alienating those people who have a local agenda."

The exact number of foreigners in Somalia is not known. But in June, the president of Somalia's transitional federal government, Sharif Sheik Ahmed, said hundreds had arrived in the country to support al-Shabab. According to VOA sources in Somalia, many foreigners are based at al-Shabab training camps in the towns of Marka, Barawe, and Kismayo, teaching thousands of recruits bomb-making skills and guerrilla fighting tactics.

Officials in Somalia say one of these recruits, a Somali man who had grown up in Denmark, carried out the December 3 suicide bombing at a graduation ceremony for medical students attended by several government ministers. The blast killed four ministers, but also killed and wounded at least 60 bystanders.

Amid a public outcry, al-Shabab's Mogadishu-based spokesman Ali Mohamed Rage denied his group had carried out the bombing. The denial prompted some observers to speculate that foreign al-Shabab commanders may have planned the mission without consulting some of their key Somali counterparts or receiving their endorsement.

Rashid Abdi says the bombing has convinced many ordinary Somalis that al-Shabab is increasingly being controlled by foreign fighters, who have no regard for Somali lives.

Abdi says that public perception could now give Somalia's beleaguered president an opportunity to erase the humiliation his government suffered six months ago, when it was forced to beg for troops from neighboring countries to keep the government from being toppled.

"We have to be cautious. Anger against al-Shabab does not necessarily translate into support for Sharif. But Sharif has to get out there and try to regain the political territory lost to al-Shabab," he added.

On Monday, President Sharif attended the opening session of the Somali transitional parliament in Mogadishu, dressed in a military uniform. He said the time had come to re-take the country from al-Shabab and urged parliament members and Somali citizens to assist the government in efforts to defeat the militants.

Sep 6, 2009

While Europe Sleeps, Bosnia Seethes - NYTimes.com

Image via Wikipedia

By NICHOLAS KULISH

BERLIN

NEARLY 14 years after peace for Bosnia was hammered out in Ohio, the hills rising up around Sarajevo can still lead a visitor to uncomfortable thoughts about sightlines for snipers.

As I stood there in person on a visit back in May with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the violence of the ’90s didn’t feel so far away. Mr. Biden barnstormed through the Balkans on Air Force 2, also stopping in Serbia and Kosovo, with the goal of trying to draw flagging attention back to the region, delivering his sternest lecture to the Bosnian Parliament, warning against falling back onto “old patterns and ancient animosities.”

Mr. Biden is not alone in his warnings. In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, under the headline “The Death of Dayton,” Patrice C. McMahon and Jon Western write that because of ethnic divisions that refuse to heal, widespread corruption and political deadlock, “the country now stands on the brink of collapse” and “unless checked, the current trends toward fragmentation will almost certainly lead to a resumption of violence.”

Whether or not that happens, the peacekeeping force meant to crack down on any outbreaks now has fewer than 2,000 troops. And the American contingent, a promise and a deterrent to those who justifiably doubt the European Union’s resolve if force is needed, has left entirely.

These circumstances might be cause for widespread alarm, if anyone had noticed them in the first place. It didn’t used to be that way. It used to be that you didn’t have to shout to get heard on the subject of Bosnia. The name alone was enough to evoke the rape, torture, burned-out homes and mass graves that marked a three-and-a-half-year war in which roughly 100,000 people were killed, a majority of them Muslims.

But that was a long time ago. For much of the Western world Bosnia is an all-but-forgotten problem, far down the list of priorities after countries like Iraq, Iran and North Korea. As if to drive the point home, the chief architect of the Dayton peace accords in the Clinton administration, Richard C. Holbrooke, now a special envoy in the Obama administration, has his hands full with the war in Afghanistan and the even more complex situation in neighboring, nuclear-armed Pakistan. Mr. Holbrooke has complained in recent years of a “distracted international community.”

If the drift of public attention away from Bosnia is a result of more pressing issues in an age of terrorism and rogue nuclear states, it is also a function of the simple fact that this ethnically divided country finds itself in the middle of a far more united, stable and at times downright boring Europe than in the days of the civil war.

Bosnia could well return to violence, but it has lost a large measure of what might be called its Franz Ferdinand threat. For all of the moral and humanitarian arguments for getting involved in the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia, there was also the severe lesson from Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination in 1914, which provided the spark for World War I. That lesson was simple: conflicts start in the Balkans, but they do not necessarily stay there.

The end of the cold war brought elation but also trepidation. In hindsight, the march of countries like Poland, Hungary and Romania from the Warsaw Pact into NATO and the European Union may appear steady and all but predestined, but the paths of those newly freed countries were anything but certain at the time. Bosnia was a starkly destabilizing factor in a far more unstable continent. The fighting that began in the spring of 1992 was not quite three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and less than a year after the attempted coup of August 1991 in Russia, and came hard on the heels of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Today, the picture has changed again. Now that Europe is no longer the fault line of a divided world, it looks ever more like a retirement community with good food and an excellent cultural calendar. Spies cut from the George Smiley cloth could really come in from the cold, retiring with legions of their countrymen to the Spanish coast, with no more to worry about than the decline of the pound against the euro and the sinking value of their condos.

The European Union has its share of problems, including a rapidly graying population projected to shrink by 50 million people by 2050 and deep troubles in integrating the immigrants — particularly from Muslim countries — it so drastically needs to reverse the demographic slide. And the union’s energy security depends on its often capricious and at times menacing neighbor to the east, Russia.

Russia’s invasion of Georgia last summer served as a stern reminder that things can still get rough outside of the gated community, and certainly made newer members like Poland and Estonia nervous about the sturdiness of the fence.

Renewed fighting in Bosnia may not launch World War III, but it could well spread to other parts of the former Yugoslavia, including Kosovo. Kosovo declared independence last year, and the United States Embassy in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, burned at the hands of angry rioters. I walked the streets in the aftermath, interviewing Serbs, and found rage, sadness and desperation even among the most pro-Western elements of society.

It was something of a pleasant surprise, then, to return with Mr. Biden this year and find average Serbs on the same streets sounding deeply pragmatic about the visit by an American politician who not only represented the superpower that had bombed them but was personally an early and staunch supporter of Muslims in both Bosnia and Kosovo. While there were holdouts, most said that jobs and freedom to travel trumped old enmities.

With any luck the sentiment will find more traction in neighboring Bosnia too, drowning out the extreme voices and their loose talk of war. Given how far the world’s attention has wandered, supporters of peace in the Balkans will have to hope they find their own path to moderation. Otherwise the crack of snipers’ bullets and the whistle of mortar shells could herald the terrible spectacle of a preventable return to bloodshed.