So, a few years ago...
Japan's Air Self-Defense Force had this plan to replace its then-aging F-4EJ (Phantom II) kai (modified) squadrons with new fighters. Since the mainstay F-15J interceptor force was substantial enough, and there remained the anti-shipping / anti-invasion-force requirement that the purely air combat F-15J's were unsuited for, the decision was made to (1) procure a new generation-four-plus aircraft with both air combat and strike capabilities, and (2) to mostly produce it here, albeit as a co-production agreement. Those choices resulted in the F-2 aircraft, which is a very fine improvement on the American F-16 Fighting Falcon design.
It also resulted in what was, then, the most expensive fighter aircraft in the world.
Production was capped at less than 100 aircraft. The production run is over; no more ever to be built. There simply wasn't enough money with the artificial limit on defense spending here (~1% GDP), all the other things that the Ground and Naval forces needed (and in many cases still need!) and the very expensive costs of manpower in our careerist all-volunteer Defense Force.
Set aside 18 of those shiny new F-2's in a training squadron and what was left barely re-equipped three squadrons. Not exactly fulfilling the "replace the F-4's" goal, that.
Oh, and fast forwarding to last year, so much for that training squadron; in the 2011 earthquake / tsunami, the airbase at Matsushima (the F-2 training base) got wiped. Every single aircraft there wrecked; at least a dozen total writeoffs.
In those intervening years, fighter/attack aircraft technology took another leap forward. Generation five fighters are a vast capacity leap upward. The only such in service now is the American F-22 Raptor, which is a marvelous interceptor, but is expensive to build, difficult and expensive to operate, has had some serious teething problems, isn't intended for most strike missions and... absolutely positively not now not ever for export to allied nations (why being a whole 'nother discussion). The alternative, and the one Japan (and the U.K. and several other U.S. allies) signed up for, is the just-entering-production F-35. It is generation five, with some advantages over the F-22 (electronics improvements) and some serious disadvantages (less... well, a lot of less) and because of its huge planned production run, less expensive.
"Ha ha", said the Princess, and she went to wash her socks.
So much for that less expensive part.
There's a new winner in the "most expensive" class.
We're stuck for 800 billion en (JPY; call that US$10 billion) for a planned total 42 aircraft buy.
That's all.
Two squadrons and a couple spares.
Delivery schedule, repeatedly delayed, starts with a 4 plane purchase currently budgeted...
...yes, I said four...
...slated for a test program.
Not counting the recee birds (RF-4EJ's; being replaced with some retasked F-15J's with synthetic aperture radar pods), there are ~90 F-4EJ kai's in service.
We're going to be flying the F-4EJ kai's until the damn wings fall off.
***
caveat: Wikipedia links, above, are for reference only. See citations there for sourcing.
site admin note: Yes, I know The Weekly Item is usually Monday; I needed to wait a day this time. Frankly, I'm just glad to be doing a few of these again.
Showing posts with label The Weekly Item. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Weekly Item. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Monday, April 30, 2012
The Weekly Item for 30.April, 2012: Shrinking
This post started life as a response/reinterpretation of R. Douthat's "Incredible Shrinking Country" opinion on the NY Times (28th April) Op/Ed page... and yeah, I wasn't going to be very nice about it. Between the fact that his writing is mostly a reaction to N. Eberstadt's far better "Japan Shrinks" and the otherwise annoying lack of understanding by Douthat of most of the anciliary issues he mentions, I'm not going to bother linking to his Op/Ed piece. However...
...while demographics are related to the on-going economic problems in Japan, they aren't uniquely responsible for how poorly things are trending right now.
I'd also note that I see the demographic future here as an opportunity with challenges, which was Eberstadt's general thrust (setting aside off-topics like some of his "random facts" mentioned), rather than the doomsayer-scenarios that similar discussions of Italy and Russia often turn into.
The real problem, likely dominant politically for the rest of this decade, is that the generation born in or just around 1980 is now ~10 years into what was supposed to be their careers and yet a stunning number have found they are "capped off" from any meaningful career opportunities by the combination of a no-growth economy and a slug-in-the-pipeline effect of a vast number of unpromotable middle-aged desk occupiers just half a generation older than them. If that sounds rather like the situation faced by Americans coming into the workforce just after 1980, well, there are some similarities. What allowed the U.S. workforce to at least in part shake that off was the long, mostly steady, rise in the U.S. economy from ~1984 to the turn of the century (arguably a bit beyond that, even). New enterprises and expansion of existing businesses spread the demand for experienced employees and opened new pathways of advancement. Japan, today, sees little or nothing of that sort of opportunity. But given a chance, it could.
Here's the rub: Japan is faced with a pair of nasty problems that as a set run contrary to the solution of either problem.
Problem One: Any hope of shaking off the shackles of low growth has to come by creating a positive business environment, and we're currently going backwards on that, not forward. Roughly 30% of electric power generation capability is off-line or going to be allowed to restart on a very limited basis... those would be our nuclear power stations. Insufficient or unreliable electric power supply is doom to manufacturing and nearly as damning to any modern urban office activity. Starting up or even expanding an existing company is still a process of red-tape-wrestling frustration for anything more complex than a neighborhood ramen shop. While direct corporate taxation was somewhat reformed during the Koizumi administration, the combination of direct corporate taxation, indirect mandated expenses and a virtual penalty for making any worker a "regular" employee rather than a contract or temp worker remains burdensome. Add to that the fact that no real recovery of the job losses in contract and temp employment in the wake of last year's disaster panic has happened and you are looking at a real unemployment/underemployment for the born-around-1980 generation that remains absurdly higher than the official workforce unemployment rate (By some measures, over 20% vs under 5%). Having the domestic part of the economy rebound would help that a lot, but even with the need to rebuild from last year's disaster we are only seeing GDP growth in the low 2% range (Broken Window Fallacy, but it is a demand). Schemes of the current administration to raise the Consumption (Sales) Tax will prove even more damaging to domestic demand after a brief pre-implementation bubble. Lastly, as Export remains a prime driver in the Japanese economy (roughly 30% of all activity, until recently), there is the possibility of getting growth going by export... except... the en (Yen; JPY) is at an all-time high against pretty much every other currency in the world.
Problem Two: The short-term efforts needed to shore up electric power generation (barely) by massive imports of fossil fuels and the import needs for rebuilding both play hobb with Japan's balance of trade. Without the purchasing power of a super-strong JPY, the cost might likely be unaffordable. But the same super-strong JPY makes imports of a wide array of consumer demands cheaper than domestic-origin goods. In the short run that's a necessary evil; in the long run it may well permanently stunt the already-feeble production of goods for the domestic market. Since full-on Merchantilism and WTO membership are incompatible (for a good reason! cf. PRChina), there's no way to slam that door and little benefit even if there was a way.
Those are the horns we are stuck on: Need a weaker JPY to restore Export and preserve an opportunity for long-term domestic growth; Need a strong JPY to pay for rebuilding after the disaster and to paper over our fears and inablities in providing electric power.
Hypothesis Time:
Lacking any sign of ロナルド・レーガン reborn as a Japanese politician, the odds of having a "Morning in Japan" moment seem pretty long. Bringing down the bunch of DPJ (Democratic Party of Japan) amateurs and Finance Ministry draftees that make up our current government would be a very fine start, however. There are a few folks left in the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party; the old guard now in opposition) that could do some good, and there is hope that the YP (lit. "Everyone's Party" but commonly rendered as Your Party) may someday grow into a proper limited-government party that could take on most of the issues in Problem One, above. Neither are really ready, but either are head-and-shoulders more able than the current crew. For that to happen, it will be necessary to hang on the current administration all the blame they deserve and for the electorate of Japan to realize how horrible the situation actually is. Faced with a sense of "we can't be broke; I still have cheques!" upper middle class, that's going to take some educating... but it is possible. One can undermine all the DPJ ploys of offering grants to families with children by making general prosperity and less burdensome government the promise; financially secure citizens make commitments that the fearful do not.
It is time to show some serious fortitude and either fish or cut bait about the national electricity supply: Either go through an upheaval in the Utility sector that turns the regulators of the nuclear industry into bulldogs (rather than the lap dogs they are currently seen to be) and then go all-in on building *lots* of the newest model and safest nuclear power stations... yes that would be the order required; the Japanese public is prone to panic and nuclear power after Fukushima Daiichi is pretty much top of the panic scale... Or dive in with whole heart into the brave new world of Natural Gas as a generator fuel of choice and spend the money now while the JPY is so strong to lock in opportunities in any of the many places where shale gas production is remaking the world energy market. Don't let various Carbon-reduction schemes further injure the economy, or go spending or encouraging any deeper moves into any of the new "green" tech power generation ideas unless they make stand-alone economic good sense right now. Both of those are luxuries, and until Japan is back on the course of wealth (if then), they need be ignored.
Realize a strong JPY is needed this week or month, but not necessarily much after that. This is a risky one... Devalue. The fact so far is that the BoJ (Nippon Ginkou; Bank of Japan) has been persistently engaged in monetary expansion trying to stem the JPY rise for years as well as bail out the Government's awful budget choices and has done rather little of any use in the process. Changing the course of a currency isn't a nice thing to do (cf. the intentional destruction of the value of the US$) and only the most powerful central banks (cf. US Federal Reserve System) can hope to get away with doing it without severe reprisals. That said, as cited in the article linked above, the current government bond situation in Japan is totally dependent on unsustainably low interest rates (~1% on a 10-year note) and a move by bonds to a historically low twice that much would destroy the government's finances... and analysts are seeing a devaluation risk in order to get out from under that sword. How much? Try a JPY40 devaluation vs. the US$. Wham. Welcome back to the "natural" ~115Y/$ trading range of the last two decades. Fair question, though: Can they get away with it? Triggering a full-on currency war helps no one in the end. If a race for the floor doesn't happen, then there is still the reputation damage with foreigners holding the currency (that would be PRChina, for one). It has to happen all at once, too, or foreign exchage speculation can undermine much of the hoped-for gain. Debasing the currency has lots of other risks internally too. But something needs to happen and "easing" isn't getting the job done.
There is certainly more to each of these items, above, and I encourage discussion in the comments about them.
There are certainly other things that will have to play out as well. Like Europe and the USA, Japan has an absurd Higher Education bubble that while not the burden on taxpayers and loan-demanding students that those cases are, is a spectacular expense that generates remarkably little benefit in applicable workforce skills. The conundrum of rising medical demand and yet not enough students willing to train to be doctors is also in the mix. If you have thoughts on what else is in play, do feel free to discuss that as well.
But, to wrap up the hypothesis, I offer you this: A Japan of declining population is a wonderful opportunity to make a better lifestyle and to remove some of the pressure our overcrowded civilization has placed on our limited land. If that meant a hundred years from now Japan is a rich population of 50 million people with the financial means to restore much of what has been changed to support 120 million, *and* rich enough to engage in the luxury of chosing appropriate technologies rather than only necessary ones, that would be fine... Or we might see a hundred year swing of the demographic pendulum back toward 80~90 million as the population regains confidence that there will be enough wealth and opportunity for generations of people to thrive... But we aren't going to get there if we can't get a handle on economic growth sufficent to generate the wealth that either offering requires.
The problem of the economy and the social conditions it creates is the place our focus need be directed. The rest, as they say, will follow.
...while demographics are related to the on-going economic problems in Japan, they aren't uniquely responsible for how poorly things are trending right now.
I'd also note that I see the demographic future here as an opportunity with challenges, which was Eberstadt's general thrust (setting aside off-topics like some of his "random facts" mentioned), rather than the doomsayer-scenarios that similar discussions of Italy and Russia often turn into.
The real problem, likely dominant politically for the rest of this decade, is that the generation born in or just around 1980 is now ~10 years into what was supposed to be their careers and yet a stunning number have found they are "capped off" from any meaningful career opportunities by the combination of a no-growth economy and a slug-in-the-pipeline effect of a vast number of unpromotable middle-aged desk occupiers just half a generation older than them. If that sounds rather like the situation faced by Americans coming into the workforce just after 1980, well, there are some similarities. What allowed the U.S. workforce to at least in part shake that off was the long, mostly steady, rise in the U.S. economy from ~1984 to the turn of the century (arguably a bit beyond that, even). New enterprises and expansion of existing businesses spread the demand for experienced employees and opened new pathways of advancement. Japan, today, sees little or nothing of that sort of opportunity. But given a chance, it could.
Here's the rub: Japan is faced with a pair of nasty problems that as a set run contrary to the solution of either problem.
Problem One: Any hope of shaking off the shackles of low growth has to come by creating a positive business environment, and we're currently going backwards on that, not forward. Roughly 30% of electric power generation capability is off-line or going to be allowed to restart on a very limited basis... those would be our nuclear power stations. Insufficient or unreliable electric power supply is doom to manufacturing and nearly as damning to any modern urban office activity. Starting up or even expanding an existing company is still a process of red-tape-wrestling frustration for anything more complex than a neighborhood ramen shop. While direct corporate taxation was somewhat reformed during the Koizumi administration, the combination of direct corporate taxation, indirect mandated expenses and a virtual penalty for making any worker a "regular" employee rather than a contract or temp worker remains burdensome. Add to that the fact that no real recovery of the job losses in contract and temp employment in the wake of last year's disaster panic has happened and you are looking at a real unemployment/underemployment for the born-around-1980 generation that remains absurdly higher than the official workforce unemployment rate (By some measures, over 20% vs under 5%). Having the domestic part of the economy rebound would help that a lot, but even with the need to rebuild from last year's disaster we are only seeing GDP growth in the low 2% range (Broken Window Fallacy, but it is a demand). Schemes of the current administration to raise the Consumption (Sales) Tax will prove even more damaging to domestic demand after a brief pre-implementation bubble. Lastly, as Export remains a prime driver in the Japanese economy (roughly 30% of all activity, until recently), there is the possibility of getting growth going by export... except... the en (Yen; JPY) is at an all-time high against pretty much every other currency in the world.
Problem Two: The short-term efforts needed to shore up electric power generation (barely) by massive imports of fossil fuels and the import needs for rebuilding both play hobb with Japan's balance of trade. Without the purchasing power of a super-strong JPY, the cost might likely be unaffordable. But the same super-strong JPY makes imports of a wide array of consumer demands cheaper than domestic-origin goods. In the short run that's a necessary evil; in the long run it may well permanently stunt the already-feeble production of goods for the domestic market. Since full-on Merchantilism and WTO membership are incompatible (for a good reason! cf. PRChina), there's no way to slam that door and little benefit even if there was a way.
Those are the horns we are stuck on: Need a weaker JPY to restore Export and preserve an opportunity for long-term domestic growth; Need a strong JPY to pay for rebuilding after the disaster and to paper over our fears and inablities in providing electric power.
Hypothesis Time:
Lacking any sign of ロナルド・レーガン reborn as a Japanese politician, the odds of having a "Morning in Japan" moment seem pretty long. Bringing down the bunch of DPJ (Democratic Party of Japan) amateurs and Finance Ministry draftees that make up our current government would be a very fine start, however. There are a few folks left in the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party; the old guard now in opposition) that could do some good, and there is hope that the YP (lit. "Everyone's Party" but commonly rendered as Your Party) may someday grow into a proper limited-government party that could take on most of the issues in Problem One, above. Neither are really ready, but either are head-and-shoulders more able than the current crew. For that to happen, it will be necessary to hang on the current administration all the blame they deserve and for the electorate of Japan to realize how horrible the situation actually is. Faced with a sense of "we can't be broke; I still have cheques!" upper middle class, that's going to take some educating... but it is possible. One can undermine all the DPJ ploys of offering grants to families with children by making general prosperity and less burdensome government the promise; financially secure citizens make commitments that the fearful do not.
It is time to show some serious fortitude and either fish or cut bait about the national electricity supply: Either go through an upheaval in the Utility sector that turns the regulators of the nuclear industry into bulldogs (rather than the lap dogs they are currently seen to be) and then go all-in on building *lots* of the newest model and safest nuclear power stations... yes that would be the order required; the Japanese public is prone to panic and nuclear power after Fukushima Daiichi is pretty much top of the panic scale... Or dive in with whole heart into the brave new world of Natural Gas as a generator fuel of choice and spend the money now while the JPY is so strong to lock in opportunities in any of the many places where shale gas production is remaking the world energy market. Don't let various Carbon-reduction schemes further injure the economy, or go spending or encouraging any deeper moves into any of the new "green" tech power generation ideas unless they make stand-alone economic good sense right now. Both of those are luxuries, and until Japan is back on the course of wealth (if then), they need be ignored.
Realize a strong JPY is needed this week or month, but not necessarily much after that. This is a risky one... Devalue. The fact so far is that the BoJ (Nippon Ginkou; Bank of Japan) has been persistently engaged in monetary expansion trying to stem the JPY rise for years as well as bail out the Government's awful budget choices and has done rather little of any use in the process. Changing the course of a currency isn't a nice thing to do (cf. the intentional destruction of the value of the US$) and only the most powerful central banks (cf. US Federal Reserve System) can hope to get away with doing it without severe reprisals. That said, as cited in the article linked above, the current government bond situation in Japan is totally dependent on unsustainably low interest rates (~1% on a 10-year note) and a move by bonds to a historically low twice that much would destroy the government's finances... and analysts are seeing a devaluation risk in order to get out from under that sword. How much? Try a JPY40 devaluation vs. the US$. Wham. Welcome back to the "natural" ~115Y/$ trading range of the last two decades. Fair question, though: Can they get away with it? Triggering a full-on currency war helps no one in the end. If a race for the floor doesn't happen, then there is still the reputation damage with foreigners holding the currency (that would be PRChina, for one). It has to happen all at once, too, or foreign exchage speculation can undermine much of the hoped-for gain. Debasing the currency has lots of other risks internally too. But something needs to happen and "easing" isn't getting the job done.
There is certainly more to each of these items, above, and I encourage discussion in the comments about them.
There are certainly other things that will have to play out as well. Like Europe and the USA, Japan has an absurd Higher Education bubble that while not the burden on taxpayers and loan-demanding students that those cases are, is a spectacular expense that generates remarkably little benefit in applicable workforce skills. The conundrum of rising medical demand and yet not enough students willing to train to be doctors is also in the mix. If you have thoughts on what else is in play, do feel free to discuss that as well.
But, to wrap up the hypothesis, I offer you this: A Japan of declining population is a wonderful opportunity to make a better lifestyle and to remove some of the pressure our overcrowded civilization has placed on our limited land. If that meant a hundred years from now Japan is a rich population of 50 million people with the financial means to restore much of what has been changed to support 120 million, *and* rich enough to engage in the luxury of chosing appropriate technologies rather than only necessary ones, that would be fine... Or we might see a hundred year swing of the demographic pendulum back toward 80~90 million as the population regains confidence that there will be enough wealth and opportunity for generations of people to thrive... But we aren't going to get there if we can't get a handle on economic growth sufficent to generate the wealth that either offering requires.
The problem of the economy and the social conditions it creates is the place our focus need be directed. The rest, as they say, will follow.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
The Weekly N&C -- Special Edition
He only was Koh-operating
There has been a little bit of a stir in the media since Saturday’s Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal by U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R, South Carolina) regarding his fact-finding trip to Honduras last week… while most of what he tells of is simply the situation as it stands politically between the United States government and the Government of Honduras, one part has gathered attention:
Were there to be a legal opinion guiding the U.S. DeptState actions in this crisis, it would certainly be of note. Moreover, given well-presented legal arguments by such scholars as Miguel Estrada that the Government of Honduras acted fully within its Constitution in removing former-President Manuel Zelaya from office (although his then forcible exile was not), the opportunity to compare and contrast, if not contest the DeptState opinion would be exceptionally insightful as to why the Obama administration has taken the otherwise-difficult-to-explain course of action that it has to date.
Senator DeMint has not been able to see the “Koh legal analysis and Honduras Constitutional Report” as referenced by Ambassador Llorens, or even confirm its existence, he states. Well, this author has never let such little things as difficulty get in the way of doing his research… and out went the calls to some friends and old associates to see if a copy could be found.
Not.A.Chance.
Current lists of the nuclear permission codes are less closely held secrets than the Koh opinion, apparently.
But, in a wonderful moment of someone thinking through what it all meant *and telling me*, the entire matter became almost moot: It is a red herring. It may in fact be a ploy by Amb. Llorens perpetrated to deflect the Law Library of Congress Report on the Honduran Constitutional Law Issues regarding the removal of M. Zelaya from office.
Here’s what we do know:
The U.S. government response to the Honduran arrest of M. Zelaya was keyed off of a telephone call by the Zelaya regime’s Foreign Minister Patricia Rodas to the American Ambassador in Honduras, Hugo Llorens, claiming a violent overthrow of the government and all manner of abuses upon her person (none substantiated to date, by the by).
Within one hour of that telephone call, Dan Restrepo (Western Hemisphere advisor to the Obama National Security Council) was in action, directing the response. Within hours, he also had the Organization of American States queuing up an emergency meeting, which was then held scant hours later. This was followed by a media round up call by Restrepo to pre-selected favorable media to whom he laid down statements. (Notably, neither have those statements of June 28th held up to what evidence is out there, nor have subsequent statements by D. Restrepo and P. Rodas’ to the OAS and the media, been verified by any U.S. DeptState source. Many are simply unverifiable.)
Anyone notice time in there to get Harold Koh on the job to issue a legal opinion to guide DeptState’s course?
I didn’t think so.
This has been D. Restrepo’s show from the get-go; one that he went to a fair amount of trouble to keep out of the public eye for the first weeks of the situation, going so far as to insist on being “Administration Official #1” in those media briefings on background. It has only been since the Zelaya re-appearance and sequestration in the Embassy of Brazil in Tegucigalpa that D. Restrepo’s name has come out much at all… He showed up at the Americas Conference in Miami the first of this month and was tapped for an intererview by Andres Oppenheimer of the Miami Herald (the Herald was a co-sponsor of the conference, by the way). In that, the line taken was that “the President” calls it a coup.
That may be true now, but it very likely wasn’t so on day one.
It is also exceedingly likely that there was *no* legal opinion by H. Koh in hand on day one either.
Again, from one of those willing to talk to me:
So why did Ambassador H. Llorens say such a thing to Senator DeMint?
Well…
It may well be that he thought he could sandbag a freshman Senator with a grand total of 10 years on Capitol Hill (Congress, 3 goes, before being elected to the Senate). His Foreign Affairs Committee staff is still pretty new at things, for example.
It may be that H. Llorens is desperately searching for any cover that will help him keep his job. He’s a hold-over, not an Obama appointee. One indication of this is that he’s been seen trolling around Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R, FL-18) begging support during the Congressional Delegation to Honduras… playing the fellow-Cuban-American card… and his being reminded in reply (paraphrase) “Fidel Castro also claims to be Cuban”…
The determined effort of those pleading the “I need to keep my job” argument also applies to any number of the regulars from DeptState involved in this Honduras matter. A surprising number of excuses are being made, privately. But there are others…
Senator John Kerry made it abundantly clear in his efforts to block the DeMint delegation from going to Honduras that any cooperation by DeptState for that trip was simply not going to happen. That DeMint managed to elude the blocking effort and get approval by other means actually does the first-term Senator credit, by the way. The entire pro-Obama faction in the Senate was lined up against his going.
So… to sum this all up:
Yes, there is reportedly –as stated by a sitting U.S. ambassador- a legal opinion out in DeptState land somewhere written by H. Koh regarding the removal of M. Zelaya from office by the Government of Honduras.
What it says, if its existence is ever confirmed, is of little importance. *When* he said it matters.
Because only by nailing down as a clear fact that an Advisor on the National Security Council with a history of undermining and playing for the other team was winging matters of state, playing on his own highly-placed status, for his own political constituent purposes (and those of his friends in far-away places), with neither deference to all the information readily available nor a constitutional role in setting policy for the State Department (that authority rests in the Presidency, via the Secretary of State), can the entire story of how the Obama administration ended up on the wrong side of the Crisis in Honduras begin to be told.
…and that is a story that needs to be told.
***
End Notes:
All footnotes are embedded as links in the text.
Private sources are known to this author, but choose to remain anonymous (for good reason).
The assertion as to Dan Restrepo’s “history of undermining and playing for the other team” specifically refers to his partisan acts rendering himself unsuitable for employment on the House Committee on International Relations by acting against the interests of then-Chairman Benjamin A. Gilman and the Committee at the behest of Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott. Citation: Letter of February 20th, 1996, from Congressman Gilman to Congressman Hamilton (D. Restrepo’s employer) detailing the malfeasance and requiring his removal from Committee activity. Result: Quiet exile for Mr. Restrepo.
Fair Disclosure: This author is no fan of Parliamentary Diplomacy… the act of a representative of the legislature running off to engage in their own diplomatic efforts. I am against it when it happens in the U.K., in the U.S., and even here in Japan. The business of diplomacy is that of the Executive. I am only willing to cut Senator J. DeMint some slack this time because (a) He proposed no diplomatic initiatives of his own on his trip, it really was “fact-finding”; and (b) He is on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, including a place on the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Operations and Organizations, Human Rights, Democracy and Global Women's Issues. Both the Democracy matters and the role of the OAS in this Crisis are within his purview.
There has been a little bit of a stir in the media since Saturday’s Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal by U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R, South Carolina) regarding his fact-finding trip to Honduras last week… while most of what he tells of is simply the situation as it stands politically between the United States government and the Government of Honduras, one part has gathered attention:
In a day packed with meetings, we met only one person in Honduras who opposed Mr. Zelaya's ouster, who wishes his return, and who mystifyingly rejects the legitimacy of the November elections: U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens.Hm. That’s new.
When I asked Ambassador Llorens why the U.S. government insists on labeling what appears to the entire country to be the constitutional removal of Mr. Zelaya a "coup," he urged me to read the legal opinion drafted by the State Department's top lawyer, Harold Koh. As it happens, I have asked to see Mr. Koh's report before and since my trip, but all requests to publicly disclose it have been denied.
Were there to be a legal opinion guiding the U.S. DeptState actions in this crisis, it would certainly be of note. Moreover, given well-presented legal arguments by such scholars as Miguel Estrada that the Government of Honduras acted fully within its Constitution in removing former-President Manuel Zelaya from office (although his then forcible exile was not), the opportunity to compare and contrast, if not contest the DeptState opinion would be exceptionally insightful as to why the Obama administration has taken the otherwise-difficult-to-explain course of action that it has to date.
Senator DeMint has not been able to see the “Koh legal analysis and Honduras Constitutional Report” as referenced by Ambassador Llorens, or even confirm its existence, he states. Well, this author has never let such little things as difficulty get in the way of doing his research… and out went the calls to some friends and old associates to see if a copy could be found.
Not.A.Chance.
Current lists of the nuclear permission codes are less closely held secrets than the Koh opinion, apparently.
But, in a wonderful moment of someone thinking through what it all meant *and telling me*, the entire matter became almost moot: It is a red herring. It may in fact be a ploy by Amb. Llorens perpetrated to deflect the Law Library of Congress Report on the Honduran Constitutional Law Issues regarding the removal of M. Zelaya from office.
Here’s what we do know:
The U.S. government response to the Honduran arrest of M. Zelaya was keyed off of a telephone call by the Zelaya regime’s Foreign Minister Patricia Rodas to the American Ambassador in Honduras, Hugo Llorens, claiming a violent overthrow of the government and all manner of abuses upon her person (none substantiated to date, by the by).
Within one hour of that telephone call, Dan Restrepo (Western Hemisphere advisor to the Obama National Security Council) was in action, directing the response. Within hours, he also had the Organization of American States queuing up an emergency meeting, which was then held scant hours later. This was followed by a media round up call by Restrepo to pre-selected favorable media to whom he laid down statements. (Notably, neither have those statements of June 28th held up to what evidence is out there, nor have subsequent statements by D. Restrepo and P. Rodas’ to the OAS and the media, been verified by any U.S. DeptState source. Many are simply unverifiable.)
Anyone notice time in there to get Harold Koh on the job to issue a legal opinion to guide DeptState’s course?
I didn’t think so.
This has been D. Restrepo’s show from the get-go; one that he went to a fair amount of trouble to keep out of the public eye for the first weeks of the situation, going so far as to insist on being “Administration Official #1” in those media briefings on background. It has only been since the Zelaya re-appearance and sequestration in the Embassy of Brazil in Tegucigalpa that D. Restrepo’s name has come out much at all… He showed up at the Americas Conference in Miami the first of this month and was tapped for an intererview by Andres Oppenheimer of the Miami Herald (the Herald was a co-sponsor of the conference, by the way). In that, the line taken was that “the President” calls it a coup.
That may be true now, but it very likely wasn’t so on day one.
It is also exceedingly likely that there was *no* legal opinion by H. Koh in hand on day one either.
Again, from one of those willing to talk to me:
Besides, Koh was asked for a legal analysis in June and again in July and released nothing to the Hill- ever. State Dept promised reports and 6 xxx said they were "too busy" and would get to it one day...I’ll wager there is one now… but seeing the date it was issued is almost as important as the position it enumerates.
So why did Ambassador H. Llorens say such a thing to Senator DeMint?
Well…
It may well be that he thought he could sandbag a freshman Senator with a grand total of 10 years on Capitol Hill (Congress, 3 goes, before being elected to the Senate). His Foreign Affairs Committee staff is still pretty new at things, for example.
It may be that H. Llorens is desperately searching for any cover that will help him keep his job. He’s a hold-over, not an Obama appointee. One indication of this is that he’s been seen trolling around Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R, FL-18) begging support during the Congressional Delegation to Honduras… playing the fellow-Cuban-American card… and his being reminded in reply (paraphrase) “Fidel Castro also claims to be Cuban”…
The determined effort of those pleading the “I need to keep my job” argument also applies to any number of the regulars from DeptState involved in this Honduras matter. A surprising number of excuses are being made, privately. But there are others…
Senator John Kerry made it abundantly clear in his efforts to block the DeMint delegation from going to Honduras that any cooperation by DeptState for that trip was simply not going to happen. That DeMint managed to elude the blocking effort and get approval by other means actually does the first-term Senator credit, by the way. The entire pro-Obama faction in the Senate was lined up against his going.
So… to sum this all up:
Yes, there is reportedly –as stated by a sitting U.S. ambassador- a legal opinion out in DeptState land somewhere written by H. Koh regarding the removal of M. Zelaya from office by the Government of Honduras.
What it says, if its existence is ever confirmed, is of little importance. *When* he said it matters.
Because only by nailing down as a clear fact that an Advisor on the National Security Council with a history of undermining and playing for the other team was winging matters of state, playing on his own highly-placed status, for his own political constituent purposes (and those of his friends in far-away places), with neither deference to all the information readily available nor a constitutional role in setting policy for the State Department (that authority rests in the Presidency, via the Secretary of State), can the entire story of how the Obama administration ended up on the wrong side of the Crisis in Honduras begin to be told.
…and that is a story that needs to be told.
***
End Notes:
All footnotes are embedded as links in the text.
Private sources are known to this author, but choose to remain anonymous (for good reason).
The assertion as to Dan Restrepo’s “history of undermining and playing for the other team” specifically refers to his partisan acts rendering himself unsuitable for employment on the House Committee on International Relations by acting against the interests of then-Chairman Benjamin A. Gilman and the Committee at the behest of Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott. Citation: Letter of February 20th, 1996, from Congressman Gilman to Congressman Hamilton (D. Restrepo’s employer) detailing the malfeasance and requiring his removal from Committee activity. Result: Quiet exile for Mr. Restrepo.
Fair Disclosure: This author is no fan of Parliamentary Diplomacy… the act of a representative of the legislature running off to engage in their own diplomatic efforts. I am against it when it happens in the U.K., in the U.S., and even here in Japan. The business of diplomacy is that of the Executive. I am only willing to cut Senator J. DeMint some slack this time because (a) He proposed no diplomatic initiatives of his own on his trip, it really was “fact-finding”; and (b) He is on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, including a place on the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Operations and Organizations, Human Rights, Democracy and Global Women's Issues. Both the Democracy matters and the role of the OAS in this Crisis are within his purview.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
The Weekly N&C for August 3rd, 2009
Read this Book
(Note: I'm unavailable for lengthy project work some days this week. But thanks to the assistance of CompHyp-friend Adam Housley over at FOXNews, here's a matter of some interest to those who have been following the Kimberley Process matters regarding the Marange Diamond Field. I've not met Douglas Rogers, but given his insight and family relation to the matter, here's hoping I do meet him.)
Mr. Douglas Rogers, late of Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) via South Africa and London, is a New York based journalist who has gained a superb repute as a travel and adventure writer. But when his byline shows up on some hard news reports on the Zimbabwe Cholera Outbreak (December 3rd, 2008) and then the Marange Diamond Field Massacres, that sort of draws one's attention. It turns out that the gentleman is son of the soil of Rhodesia, born in Mutare (Umtali) and... still has family there. This allows for primary-source reporting of the situation *in context*, and he doesn't miss his chance.
Here's a link to an interview he gave at FOX Business (with David Asman) on the whole matter of Marange, the Human Rights Watch report on how the ZANU-PF -run army took over the mines, and the abomination of how they did and still do run the place at gunpoint. The interview also promotes his soon-to-be available book on the experiences of his family and the people of the area... very fine timing there, sir.
The book is called The Last Resort and can be preordered at Amazon by that link, should one care to do so. It is a memoir, and by what can be seen of it in previews / reviews, a most valuable one.
His personal promotional web site is linked *here*, and includes a biography of the gentleman as well as information on his writings.
Thank you, Douglas Rogers, for telling your family's story.
(Note: I'm unavailable for lengthy project work some days this week. But thanks to the assistance of CompHyp-friend Adam Housley over at FOXNews, here's a matter of some interest to those who have been following the Kimberley Process matters regarding the Marange Diamond Field. I've not met Douglas Rogers, but given his insight and family relation to the matter, here's hoping I do meet him.)
Mr. Douglas Rogers, late of Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) via South Africa and London, is a New York based journalist who has gained a superb repute as a travel and adventure writer. But when his byline shows up on some hard news reports on the Zimbabwe Cholera Outbreak (December 3rd, 2008) and then the Marange Diamond Field Massacres, that sort of draws one's attention. It turns out that the gentleman is son of the soil of Rhodesia, born in Mutare (Umtali) and... still has family there. This allows for primary-source reporting of the situation *in context*, and he doesn't miss his chance.
Here's a link to an interview he gave at FOX Business (with David Asman) on the whole matter of Marange, the Human Rights Watch report on how the ZANU-PF -run army took over the mines, and the abomination of how they did and still do run the place at gunpoint. The interview also promotes his soon-to-be available book on the experiences of his family and the people of the area... very fine timing there, sir.
The book is called The Last Resort and can be preordered at Amazon by that link, should one care to do so. It is a memoir, and by what can be seen of it in previews / reviews, a most valuable one.
His personal promotional web site is linked *here*, and includes a biography of the gentleman as well as information on his writings.
Thank you, Douglas Rogers, for telling your family's story.
Monday, July 27, 2009
The Weekly N&C for July 27th, 2009
We have done a lot in a year.
While the 'blog anniversary is not until the 1st of August, this is the wrap for one year of CompHyp's The Weekly Item. Forty five entries, most of them long enough to be an in-depth look at some of the World Events that usually don't get a lot of time on the nightly news.
It has been a pleasure to do this, and I hope it has been of use to you.
If you are of the mind to see where this began, Here's The Weekly N&C for August 4th, 2008.
Expect more of the same, from "Local News" (matters regarding Japan) to matters in the far corners of the globe. Expect more analysis of why things are happening, and more efforts to point a spotlight at some of the dark places where trouble spreads from in the world.
Maybe, just maybe, what you and I do here helps.
While the 'blog anniversary is not until the 1st of August, this is the wrap for one year of CompHyp's The Weekly Item. Forty five entries, most of them long enough to be an in-depth look at some of the World Events that usually don't get a lot of time on the nightly news.
It has been a pleasure to do this, and I hope it has been of use to you.
If you are of the mind to see where this began, Here's The Weekly N&C for August 4th, 2008.
Expect more of the same, from "Local News" (matters regarding Japan) to matters in the far corners of the globe. Expect more analysis of why things are happening, and more efforts to point a spotlight at some of the dark places where trouble spreads from in the world.
Maybe, just maybe, what you and I do here helps.
Monday, July 20, 2009
The Weekly N&C for July 20th, 2009
Apples and Apples and Oranges
So is there ever a case where one international situation is the same (within argument); that there are enough parallels that hypocrisy in the reaction of outside governments becomes apparent?
Rhetorical question.
One that is almost unanswerable without a detailed knowledge of the finer points of any cases being compared, but...
...when such comparisons do catch the attention, hypocrisy can be the second thing to come to mind (the first always being "the world is a terrible place", or some other such moment of sympathy for the innocent caught up in the turmoil).
Here's a couple of cases, just to see whether they trigger one's hypocrisy alarm:
The Bolivarian Socialist bloc, voiced by President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, have claimed open support for demonstrations inside Honduras in favor of making removed-and-exiled former President Manuel Zelaya un-exiled and reinstated. They have certainly made vast amounts of resources available to sustain demonstrations and political protests outside Honduras, and there is solid enough evidence that they've sent support to the Zelaya faction inside Honduras.
So what? Zelaya is their man, and he got caught working the political machinations to turn Honduras into a Chavista vassal state. Of course they are opposed to his removal. Power to the Zelaya People and print up more t-shirts for the protesters.
Meanwhile, in Venezuela, there have been ongoing labor actions against the various interventions by the Chavez regime... PDVSA (the national Oil monopoly) workers against party-appointed "union leaders" and "management"...
Same story goes for Venezuelan Guayana's Corporation (CGV), the State-controlled Aluminum smelters in Venezuela. Expect these strikes to be criminalized shortly.
So, protests against Honduras = good; protests against Chavista Venezuela = bad.
No surprise, but pretty blatant.
Madagascar, and the removal of Marc Ravalomanana by the military (acting on their own impetus). Ravalomanana is outright deposed, but not arrested, for a list of supposed crimes against the people and the State. He makes his way to southern Africa and is immediately welcomed into the SADC regional community as "still the legitimate President of Madagascar". Weeks went by, and pressure from all manner of the political bodies in the region mounted... threats of outside intervention were made... activists (provocateurs) demonstrated publicly, and plotted privately... the latest acts being a campaign of attempted bombings orchestrated by former government officials. Yet when this matter came before a more distant interested party (France)
Yet France, as party to the European Union response to the Honduras Crisis, and even in possession of the entire manifest of Constitutionally-compliant actions by the interim government of Honduras (up to the act of exile), has seen to withdrawing its ambassador and calling for the reinstatement of M. Zelaya.
Maybe they would see things differently if Honduras had ever been a French Colony...
The Honduras Crisis negotiations (if they still exist) are supposed to forestall "possible civil war", yet the talking points being waved around by negotiator-in-chief President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica are as of this date a list of the Zelaya camp's demands, and the talks have rightfully gone nowhere.
It will be most edifying to see if *when* the impatient Mr. Zelaya (and his far-more impatient Bolivarian Socialist backers) attempts to force the issue with rioting and his return to some corner of Honduras, whether anyone will call this act what it is:
Just another attempt to make a government in Stanleyville to oppose the government in Leopoldville. (reference: Congo Crisis, 1960)
Let's try to stop that from happening again. That time, the guys with red stars on their hats poured material and weapons in and the result was five more years of bloody and nearly senseless warfare.
If it takes someone stepping up to the Zelaya-backers and saying "if that happens, then we go all-in on the side of the Interim Government; if it doesn't, you've got your negotiations", then so be it.
What's the worst that could happen if you (a country) steps up?
Hugo Chavez rants his hatred for you. Sounds pretty much like what he does already.
Big deal.
***
End Notes:
All notes are embedded in the text as links.
General Information on all matters and persons referenced in the text are available at Wikipedia, but as always *remember that this is a contentious matter* and to check carefully all sources cited therein.
So is there ever a case where one international situation is the same (within argument); that there are enough parallels that hypocrisy in the reaction of outside governments becomes apparent?
Rhetorical question.
One that is almost unanswerable without a detailed knowledge of the finer points of any cases being compared, but...
...when such comparisons do catch the attention, hypocrisy can be the second thing to come to mind (the first always being "the world is a terrible place", or some other such moment of sympathy for the innocent caught up in the turmoil).
Here's a couple of cases, just to see whether they trigger one's hypocrisy alarm:
The Bolivarian Socialist bloc, voiced by President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, have claimed open support for demonstrations inside Honduras in favor of making removed-and-exiled former President Manuel Zelaya un-exiled and reinstated. They have certainly made vast amounts of resources available to sustain demonstrations and political protests outside Honduras, and there is solid enough evidence that they've sent support to the Zelaya faction inside Honduras.
So what? Zelaya is their man, and he got caught working the political machinations to turn Honduras into a Chavista vassal state. Of course they are opposed to his removal. Power to the Zelaya People and print up more t-shirts for the protesters.
Meanwhile, in Venezuela, there have been ongoing labor actions against the various interventions by the Chavez regime... PDVSA (the national Oil monopoly) workers against party-appointed "union leaders" and "management"...
(Provea human rights NGO general coordinator, Marino) Alvarado accused Labor Minister María Cristina Iglesias of ordering the arrest of five employees of the state-run oil company Pdvsa Gas Anaco, who led a protest last April at the gates of the Ministry of Labor.Note that the right to strike is guaranteed under the Venezuelan Constitution. Such arrests functionally make the criminalization of protests State Policy.
Alvarado stressed that such detentions show that the government has gradually become intolerant to demonstrations.
Same story goes for Venezuelan Guayana's Corporation (CGV), the State-controlled Aluminum smelters in Venezuela. Expect these strikes to be criminalized shortly.
So, protests against Honduras = good; protests against Chavista Venezuela = bad.
No surprise, but pretty blatant.
Madagascar, and the removal of Marc Ravalomanana by the military (acting on their own impetus). Ravalomanana is outright deposed, but not arrested, for a list of supposed crimes against the people and the State. He makes his way to southern Africa and is immediately welcomed into the SADC regional community as "still the legitimate President of Madagascar". Weeks went by, and pressure from all manner of the political bodies in the region mounted... threats of outside intervention were made... activists (provocateurs) demonstrated publicly, and plotted privately... the latest acts being a campaign of attempted bombings orchestrated by former government officials. Yet when this matter came before a more distant interested party (France)
France denounced the attempted strikes in its former colony and called for the island's feuding leaders to resume talks towards establishing a consensus government.In fact, France has shown a distinct willingness to keep the Rajoelina junta in place *in spite of serious Constitutional challenges to that having any legitimacy* and negotiate toward arranging for an election at some unspecified future date.
"France condemns all recourse to violence in Madagascar and hopes light is shone on this affair," said a statement from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Yet France, as party to the European Union response to the Honduras Crisis, and even in possession of the entire manifest of Constitutionally-compliant actions by the interim government of Honduras (up to the act of exile), has seen to withdrawing its ambassador and calling for the reinstatement of M. Zelaya.
Maybe they would see things differently if Honduras had ever been a French Colony...
The Honduras Crisis negotiations (if they still exist) are supposed to forestall "possible civil war", yet the talking points being waved around by negotiator-in-chief President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica are as of this date a list of the Zelaya camp's demands, and the talks have rightfully gone nowhere.
It will be most edifying to see if *when* the impatient Mr. Zelaya (and his far-more impatient Bolivarian Socialist backers) attempts to force the issue with rioting and his return to some corner of Honduras, whether anyone will call this act what it is:
Just another attempt to make a government in Stanleyville to oppose the government in Leopoldville. (reference: Congo Crisis, 1960)
Let's try to stop that from happening again. That time, the guys with red stars on their hats poured material and weapons in and the result was five more years of bloody and nearly senseless warfare.
If it takes someone stepping up to the Zelaya-backers and saying "if that happens, then we go all-in on the side of the Interim Government; if it doesn't, you've got your negotiations", then so be it.
What's the worst that could happen if you (a country) steps up?
Hugo Chavez rants his hatred for you. Sounds pretty much like what he does already.
Big deal.
***
End Notes:
All notes are embedded in the text as links.
General Information on all matters and persons referenced in the text are available at Wikipedia, but as always *remember that this is a contentious matter* and to check carefully all sources cited therein.
Monday, July 13, 2009
The Weekly N&C for July 13th, 2009
The Mountain of Ore
It was called Ertsberg by the first Europeans to find it; literally “the Mountain of Ore”. Located in the then-Dutch colony of Netherlands New Guinea (the western half of the island of New Guinea), this enormous reserve of Copper, Silver, and Gold was at first a closely guarded secret. Failing to garner either local or Dutch permission to license mineral exploration in the area, the knowledge of this place faded in the years from the 1930’s (when it was first tentatively identified) until 1959. Then, in one of the storied moments in modern mining exploration, a news report of explorers “trying to locate the source of alluvial gold in rivers flowing into the Arafura Sea” led a geologist in the employ of the Freeport mining company (the then-Freeport Sulphur) to find and read the 1936 report and gain support for an exploration mission. The team of geologists found one of the largest copper ore bodies of modern times… 33 million tons at 2.5% copper, according to the initial estimates. It was a significant find of gold and silver as well. But while the original find has been mined out for all intents and purposes, the complex of the find has expanded with continued exploration. That original number almost pales in comparison to current estimates: Even after almost 30 years of mining, the 2006 estimate of reserves was 2.8 billion tons at 1.09% copper, 0.98 grams/ton of gold, 3.78 grams/ton of silver.
But to “get to” Ertsberg, or Grasberg (as the extended find is named), one had to overcome two very significant obstacles:
1) Location. The mine site is over 100 kilometers inland from the nearest feasible site for a port of loading, and is atop a mountainous region ranging from 10,000 to 14,000 feet (3000~4000 m) in elevation in some of the most inhospitable mountainous jungle in the world. The region was utterly devoid of transport infrastructure at the time.
2) Politics. In 1959, the Netherlands New Guinea holding was under severe pressure to be decolonized. The Dutch administration saw to preparations for independence, and did grant independence to West Papua on December 1st, 1961. But the neighboring nation of Indonesia treated this declaration much the same as they had the independence of South Moluccas in the 1950’s… they prepared an invasion.
Well, location and the required means for access can be overcome, and the means for doing so were within the capability of the mining engineers, but to overcome the political problem required something more shall-we-say old fashioned: a sell-out.
The American Kennedy administration intervened on behalf of the Indonesians. All protests inside the administration that this was simply exchanging one colonial master for another were dismissed in the name of keeping Indonesia out of the Soviet sphere of influence. Secret talks and considerable pressure on the Dutch resulted in the New York Agreement of August, 1962, which placed the territory under a United Nations Temporary Executive Authority October 1st of 1963 and supposedly stipulated an “Act of Free Choice” vote to determine final status. In May of 1963, administration of the territory was transferred to Indonesia… and by September of that year the territory was “quarantined”, made a special military zone under Indonesian control.
Bet you can guess how the “Act of Free Choice” came out.
So after Indonesia claimed a unanimous vote against independence by the unspecified portion of the population they chose to poll, and the Americans went along with the fix, it became a lot easier to get on with building the mine. Not the most glorious moment in American diplomatic honesty, that.
Now 35 years and more have passed since the first mine officially opened in 1973, and during those years the people of West Papua have been under the thumb of the Javanese-led Government of Indonesia (which only began to shake off its own autocratic history with the end of the Suharto dictatorship in 1998) and subject to intentionally invasive population movements that would be called “ethnic cleansing” if it was happening somewhere like Europe.
Freeport, now Freeport-McMoRan operating as PT Freeport, has not been direct party to any of the dirty deeds of the Indonesian overlords. In fact, they employ over 19,000 people in the operation of the mine, the slurry pipeline, the aerial tramway, the concentrator and the loading facilities. But by being license-holder from the Indonesians, and by depending upon Indonesian police and military for external security, Freeport has always been identified as a “collaborator with the occupation”. Given the nature of doing business in Indonesia, it is safe to say that the regime and certain well-connected people have prospered greatly by taking their bite of the royalty payments and other “bureaucratic expenditures” necessary to get things done.
Taken all and all, one might argue that the people of West Papua are in some way morally correct in forming an insurgency against the Indonesian regime. If that insurgency was focused on the regime, this author might *maybe* even agree with that premise. The case studies of the South Moluccas and the only-recently-undone conquest of East Timor (Timor Leste) by Indonesia both make a compelling case against the Indonesian empire-building campaign. But why, in the name of all reason, would anyone think that attacking the very source of regional wealth is a good way to resist the Indonesian occupation? There must be a revenge motive that precludes good sense, or some petty “if we can’t have it, no one can” approach going on.
This is not the way to win independence, gentlemen.
Not by trying to destroy the slurry pipeline (1977). Not by killing two Americans working at the mine (2002). Not by mob action that killed 6 people in a protest demanding the mine be closed (2006). Not by killing a young Australian man who worked at the mine. Not by killing a contract security employee escorting a convoy. Your cause is not helped in the slightest by giving the “counter-terrorist” element of the Indonesian military reason to take the field.
The military occupiers are the ones who have killed the many tens of thousands of West Papuans lost in the years of resistance.
To cast them out, which is *the* goal after all, the lesson of Timor Leste needs be learned.
Find leaders. Not guerrilla band chiefs; leaders with real stature. Get them out where they can make their case.
Open the gates. Find ways to get outsiders in, and get your story out.
Recognize that not everyone in Indonesia agrees with the occupation, and make their ability to have a voice inside Indonesian politics be your voice there as well.
And…
Stop trying to kill the foreigners working at Grasberg. They aren’t drones. They aren’t stupid either. Given a chance to be on the side of the families of the people they work side-by-side with to do their jobs, they likely will be.
Right now, the people of West Papua need all the friends they can get.
***
Addenda:
*If* the murder of Australian Drew Grant was committed by someone else than the movement, that story needs to get out.
The Australian Federal Police investigators who have joined the case are certainly going to look very hard at the evidence. The history of Timor Leste has made them willing to believe the possibility of Indonesian dirty deeds.
***
End Notes:
All notes are embedded in the text as links.
General Information on most all the above-referenced places, politics, and businesses are available at Wikipedia, but in this case *show extreme caution* as to sources and attribution of all information there. This is a highly politicized matter and there are great gaps in some of the history. (cf. the entry on South Moluccas has no historical data from ~1650 to ~1950)
Fair Disclosure: this author’s father was a senior Bechtel Corporation mining project engineer in the period when the Grasberg mine was first built (by that firm).
It was called Ertsberg by the first Europeans to find it; literally “the Mountain of Ore”. Located in the then-Dutch colony of Netherlands New Guinea (the western half of the island of New Guinea), this enormous reserve of Copper, Silver, and Gold was at first a closely guarded secret. Failing to garner either local or Dutch permission to license mineral exploration in the area, the knowledge of this place faded in the years from the 1930’s (when it was first tentatively identified) until 1959. Then, in one of the storied moments in modern mining exploration, a news report of explorers “trying to locate the source of alluvial gold in rivers flowing into the Arafura Sea” led a geologist in the employ of the Freeport mining company (the then-Freeport Sulphur) to find and read the 1936 report and gain support for an exploration mission. The team of geologists found one of the largest copper ore bodies of modern times… 33 million tons at 2.5% copper, according to the initial estimates. It was a significant find of gold and silver as well. But while the original find has been mined out for all intents and purposes, the complex of the find has expanded with continued exploration. That original number almost pales in comparison to current estimates: Even after almost 30 years of mining, the 2006 estimate of reserves was 2.8 billion tons at 1.09% copper, 0.98 grams/ton of gold, 3.78 grams/ton of silver.
But to “get to” Ertsberg, or Grasberg (as the extended find is named), one had to overcome two very significant obstacles:
1) Location. The mine site is over 100 kilometers inland from the nearest feasible site for a port of loading, and is atop a mountainous region ranging from 10,000 to 14,000 feet (3000~4000 m) in elevation in some of the most inhospitable mountainous jungle in the world. The region was utterly devoid of transport infrastructure at the time.
2) Politics. In 1959, the Netherlands New Guinea holding was under severe pressure to be decolonized. The Dutch administration saw to preparations for independence, and did grant independence to West Papua on December 1st, 1961. But the neighboring nation of Indonesia treated this declaration much the same as they had the independence of South Moluccas in the 1950’s… they prepared an invasion.
Well, location and the required means for access can be overcome, and the means for doing so were within the capability of the mining engineers, but to overcome the political problem required something more shall-we-say old fashioned: a sell-out.
The American Kennedy administration intervened on behalf of the Indonesians. All protests inside the administration that this was simply exchanging one colonial master for another were dismissed in the name of keeping Indonesia out of the Soviet sphere of influence. Secret talks and considerable pressure on the Dutch resulted in the New York Agreement of August, 1962, which placed the territory under a United Nations Temporary Executive Authority October 1st of 1963 and supposedly stipulated an “Act of Free Choice” vote to determine final status. In May of 1963, administration of the territory was transferred to Indonesia… and by September of that year the territory was “quarantined”, made a special military zone under Indonesian control.
Bet you can guess how the “Act of Free Choice” came out.
So after Indonesia claimed a unanimous vote against independence by the unspecified portion of the population they chose to poll, and the Americans went along with the fix, it became a lot easier to get on with building the mine. Not the most glorious moment in American diplomatic honesty, that.
Now 35 years and more have passed since the first mine officially opened in 1973, and during those years the people of West Papua have been under the thumb of the Javanese-led Government of Indonesia (which only began to shake off its own autocratic history with the end of the Suharto dictatorship in 1998) and subject to intentionally invasive population movements that would be called “ethnic cleansing” if it was happening somewhere like Europe.
Freeport, now Freeport-McMoRan operating as PT Freeport, has not been direct party to any of the dirty deeds of the Indonesian overlords. In fact, they employ over 19,000 people in the operation of the mine, the slurry pipeline, the aerial tramway, the concentrator and the loading facilities. But by being license-holder from the Indonesians, and by depending upon Indonesian police and military for external security, Freeport has always been identified as a “collaborator with the occupation”. Given the nature of doing business in Indonesia, it is safe to say that the regime and certain well-connected people have prospered greatly by taking their bite of the royalty payments and other “bureaucratic expenditures” necessary to get things done.
Taken all and all, one might argue that the people of West Papua are in some way morally correct in forming an insurgency against the Indonesian regime. If that insurgency was focused on the regime, this author might *maybe* even agree with that premise. The case studies of the South Moluccas and the only-recently-undone conquest of East Timor (Timor Leste) by Indonesia both make a compelling case against the Indonesian empire-building campaign. But why, in the name of all reason, would anyone think that attacking the very source of regional wealth is a good way to resist the Indonesian occupation? There must be a revenge motive that precludes good sense, or some petty “if we can’t have it, no one can” approach going on.
This is not the way to win independence, gentlemen.
Not by trying to destroy the slurry pipeline (1977). Not by killing two Americans working at the mine (2002). Not by mob action that killed 6 people in a protest demanding the mine be closed (2006). Not by killing a young Australian man who worked at the mine. Not by killing a contract security employee escorting a convoy. Your cause is not helped in the slightest by giving the “counter-terrorist” element of the Indonesian military reason to take the field.
The military occupiers are the ones who have killed the many tens of thousands of West Papuans lost in the years of resistance.
To cast them out, which is *the* goal after all, the lesson of Timor Leste needs be learned.
Find leaders. Not guerrilla band chiefs; leaders with real stature. Get them out where they can make their case.
Open the gates. Find ways to get outsiders in, and get your story out.
Recognize that not everyone in Indonesia agrees with the occupation, and make their ability to have a voice inside Indonesian politics be your voice there as well.
And…
Stop trying to kill the foreigners working at Grasberg. They aren’t drones. They aren’t stupid either. Given a chance to be on the side of the families of the people they work side-by-side with to do their jobs, they likely will be.
Right now, the people of West Papua need all the friends they can get.
***
Addenda:
*If* the murder of Australian Drew Grant was committed by someone else than the movement, that story needs to get out.
The Australian Federal Police investigators who have joined the case are certainly going to look very hard at the evidence. The history of Timor Leste has made them willing to believe the possibility of Indonesian dirty deeds.
***
End Notes:
All notes are embedded in the text as links.
General Information on most all the above-referenced places, politics, and businesses are available at Wikipedia, but in this case *show extreme caution* as to sources and attribution of all information there. This is a highly politicized matter and there are great gaps in some of the history. (cf. the entry on South Moluccas has no historical data from ~1650 to ~1950)
Fair Disclosure: this author’s father was a senior Bechtel Corporation mining project engineer in the period when the Grasberg mine was first built (by that firm).
Monday, July 6, 2009
The Weekly N&C for July 6th, 2009
***The Weekly is on hold while the queue of current events runs down***
For those of you who are fans of The Weekly for its historical context items, here are a couple of Birthday remembrances from recent days for you to investigate at your leisure:
June 5th... Cecil John Rhodes. (You had to know I'd mention this one)
The Cape to Cairo Railroad plan; the successful counterclaim against Portuguese efforts to span Southern Africa with colonial holdings; and in his will, the Rhodes Scholarship.
June 6th... John Paul Jones.
For all practical purposes, the founder of the United States Navy; Captain of the Ranger and the Bon Homme Richard (Bonhomme Richard); Probably as famous on the Island of Texel, North Holland, as in the U.S.A.; The American memorial to him stands in West Potomac Park of Washington D.C.
(Links intentionally not provided to encourage your own efforts)
Enjoy your selves!
For those of you who are fans of The Weekly for its historical context items, here are a couple of Birthday remembrances from recent days for you to investigate at your leisure:
June 5th... Cecil John Rhodes. (You had to know I'd mention this one)
The Cape to Cairo Railroad plan; the successful counterclaim against Portuguese efforts to span Southern Africa with colonial holdings; and in his will, the Rhodes Scholarship.
June 6th... John Paul Jones.
For all practical purposes, the founder of the United States Navy; Captain of the Ranger and the Bon Homme Richard (Bonhomme Richard); Probably as famous on the Island of Texel, North Holland, as in the U.S.A.; The American memorial to him stands in West Potomac Park of Washington D.C.
(Links intentionally not provided to encourage your own efforts)
Enjoy your selves!
Monday, June 22, 2009
The Weekly N&C for June 22nd, 2009
Rescuing Equatoria
When the world news media turns its attention to the Republic of the Sudan these days, it almost always casts its gaze on the troubles in the Darfur region. Given that those troubles have bordered on (and been labeled as) Genocide, it is in many ways a good thing that the media looks first there. The Darfur conflict is both a tragic example of the treatment a centralized authoritarian state gives to a (relatively) recently-incorporated territory and a flash-point for border battles between the Sudanese state and its enemies in the Republic of Chad. The central authority bases itself upon the Arab Supremacy doctrine as well as the concept of concentration of power in the hands of the leadership in Khartoum. But there is more to be seen about the Sudan; for one, there are defensible historical reasons why the very idea of “Sudan” is not, and should not be, what is drawn on the map.
Speaking of maps, here is a modern political map of the Sudan. Here is a map showing the political regions of the Sudan (as of 2006). Please refer to these as needed as we proceed.
The Upper Nile and its surrounding territories were little known to outsiders other than in glimpses and tales of the interior lands until the Arabianization of the northeastern tribes and kingdoms had gone on long enough that a small Sultanate had come to be in the region of the Third Cataract of the Nile and Arab colonization along the Red Sea coast had penetrated a small distance inland… a process that took nearly a thousand years. Islam did spread, but the idea of Islamic States as per se did not go much beyond the replacement of indigenous Nubian sub-states in the north with Arabianized Nubian sub-states. The Blue Sultanate of the Sinnar (Sennar) region along the fertile part of the Blue Nile was the first to gain even tributary control over the many tribes of the Upper Nile, and had knowledge of tribes in the far south. This loose empire-in-miniature rose in the 16th Century and existed until 1820… when the Ottoman-dominated Egyptians came south.
Muhammad Ali Pasha, the Ottoman-installed Wali (Governor) of Egypt, had grown a bit “too big for his britches” taking the self-styled title of Khedive (overlord; viceroy) and setting out to increase his domain by exploration and conquest. Conveniently, this was also the beginning of the era of the great European interest in the exploration of the “Heart of Africa” and as a part of that, the search for “The Source of the Nile”. Through the 1840’s and on to 1879, this both encouraged Egyptian cooperation with European nations *outside the official relationship with the Ottoman Empire” and made a steady supply of European Adventurers available for employ by the Khedive. These men (and one very famous husband-wife team) worked mostly alone at the head of expeditions that established a chain of very modest garrisons along the Upper Nile. Unfortunately, the interest and availability of these Adventurers came at a price: The sudden, and instantly critical, awareness by European nations of the extent of the Slave Trade. It was everywhere. It was the major trade activity of the Arab interests in East Africa and along the Upper Nile. By any reasonable measure of economic “resource production”, it was the *only* major trade activity in those regions. Ivory-trade was a poor second in comparison, and there was basically no other trade of value except on the coast. The Khedive now told (one of his many) well-told lies to the Europeans: that by encouraging and supporting Egyptian control of the Upper Nile, his administration would see an end to Slave-taking and –trading.
Some believed him; others thought they could use this as an opportunity; most of the Egyptian administrators put in place by the expeditions simply ignored it. Worse, while the Slave Trade had been tied before to Red Sea ports and the East African Arab kingdom of Zanzibar and severely limited by the dangers that befell outsiders who ventured very far inland into East Africa, the explorers (both European Adventurers and Arab Slavers) were gaining the ability to penetrate farther into the countryside. By the 1870’s, heretofore unvisited tribes and territories were being brought into contact. This contact might bring negotiation and the tribe told of its place under administration, or it might just as easily bring death, disease, and enslavement; it simply depended on who got there first.
One of the earliest such places was Darfur, and it at least had the veneer of Islamization to protect *some* of its people from the Slave Trade. The confluence of the Niles was another early place of Egyptian administration, and Khartoum grew to become a moderately large center of trade linked overland along the Blue Nile and the desert to the Red Sea ports. Later, expeditions from the north established a tenuous presence far up the White Nile called “Equatoria” (part of which is the modern South Sudanese province of the same name) and explorers working from Zanzibar had mostly mapped the region of the northern Great Lakes of Africa, unveiling the strong tribal kingdom of Buganda in the process. By reaching Equatoria, the extent of the holding was well past the Arabianized tribes. This was tribal Sub-Saharan Africa. Where ever the European presence asserted control the Slave Trade was in peril, but where the Slave Trade came first, their depredations either ruined the countryside or turned the native tribals implacably hostile to outsiders.
The European influence eventually began to turn the tide against Slavery as an industry, but it also instantly destroyed the source of wealth of many powerful people in the newly-Egyptian Sudan (and in Egypt). The repression of Slavery was along with epic mismanagement by the Khedive the cause, but not the *declared* cause, of the end of Ottoman-Egyptian rule. First the Arab population of Egypt rose “against Foreign influence” and their own overlords in the Urabi Revolt (1879~1882) which was put down by British intervention in the end, resulting in the not-entirely-wanted by anyone British control of Egypt for the next ~70 years. Then came the unexpected: the Arabianized tribes of the Sudan rose in revolt… under a unifying leader.
The Mahdi (“guided one”; by implication the 12th Imam revealed) led the first “modern” jihad, raised a massive army of followers, and set to very efficiently destroying Egyptian control of the Upper Nile. Militarily, he was an astounding success. Darfur was captured, extending his rule west from the Sudd; Egyptian garrisons were cut off and destroyed above and below the confluences of the Nile, and fortified Khartoum was besieged and taken (only days before a relief column approached, by the way). The British and Egyptian forces that could do so simply withdrew; the rest mostly died. We’ll never know if the Mahdi would have been a great leader of a partly-unified Sudan, though. He died but six months after the fall of Khartoum. His replacement at the head of the Mahdiyah (Mahdist government) was a more conventional Arabianized tribal leader and his campaigns to extend the control of his rule was thwarted against Ethiopia, bested by Anglo-Egyptian troops when he attempted to invade Egypt proper, and eventually turned back from eastern ambitions by Italian colonial troops from Eritrea. With all that going on, he never made much of a significant effort to take Equatoria and the piecemeal efforts that did happen were countered by the garrison of men cut off there under the enigmatic Emin Pasha (another European Adventurer supposedly in Egyptian employ). But contact with Equatoria was cut, and as of 1889 it was believed that the garrison’s withdrawal *up* the White Nile meant the loss of the territory. But “lost” how? It had, after all, barely been “found”.
The claim was restored by a series of great adventures, including an appallingly difficult passage of a relief expedition traveling from the Congo through unexplored terrain (modern Ituri of the D. R. Congo) and then down to Zanzibar, taking from 1886~90. The British military expedition (counter-invasion) from 1896~98 came from the north and decisively defeated the Mahdiyah and brought “modern” logistical transport to the Upper Nile. A railroad reached as far as Khartoum; steam vessels vastly superior in number and quality to the small steamers used by the Egyptian garrisons now reached the far navigable extreme of the White Nile. Communication was now no longer an issue. Meanwhile, in East Africa, Zanzibar had become a British Protectorate (by force) and the Anglo-German agreement (1890) on a division of territorial influence on the mainland had brought a British East Africa Company into being. This holding expanded through what is now Kenya and in 1892 included a British Protectorate over the Kingdom of Buganda. The White Nile, from Khartoum to the Great Lakes, was under British colonial control. But a line drawn on a map placed most all of Equatoria within Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, and the rest assigned to the new Uganda Protectorate in 1894.
Clearly that line was drawn in the wrong place.
The current administration of the Republic of the Sudan inherited that line, and others drawn to make borders with what are now Ethiopia, Eritrea, Chad, the Central African Republic and the D. R. Congo. But from the very moment of post-colonial Independence in 1956, those lines proved to be a catalyst for an explosion. In the case of Equatoria, the South of Sudan (South Sudan) went to war against the Khartoum regime from day one. Only the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972 put a hold on the conflict, and that proved to be a weak protection. In 1983 the South Sudanese went back to war. After horrible hardship, South Sudan won a kind of autonomy in the Naivasha Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005. Meanwhile, the Khartoum regime had gone through 50 years of military juntas and strongmen, first Arab Nationalists, then Marxist-inspired Nationalists, and most recently waves of Islamic Fundamentalist Nationalists… the last being the regime of Omar al-Bashir (since 1989), the ICC-indicted criminal leader of the Genocide against Darfur.
Under the al-Bashir government, Khartoum has almost totally reneged upon the terms of peaceful co-existence. Development in the South has been near-nil except for the precious oil fields along the Abyei part of the line-of-division which feed foreign hard currency to the regime (and oil to the People’s Republic of China, by the way). The South Sudan autonomous administration has withdrawn from cooperation with Khartoum since 2005 over these slights… and more. Since the 1980’s, Slave-taking has returned in the Sudan, with reliable reports of over ten (perhaps tens of) thousand people taken from the southern region into Slavery.
There is only one real benefit of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, though…
…the South Sudanese don’t have to *stay* Sudanese.
The terms of the agreement specifically call for a referendum for independence for South Sudan after six years. That would be in 2011.
There is a conference on the 2005 Naivasha Comprehensive Peace Agreement being held in Washington D.C. on Tuesday of this week, hosted by American Special Envoy to the Sudan J. Scott Gration. The so-called “North” (the Khartoum regime) will be there. The South Sudanese will as well. So will interested parties from P. R. China, the United Nations, the Arab League, Britain, Italy and Egypt.
The host, by the way, gave a statement to the Washington Post last week that the Genocide in Darfur “is over”. Right then; that pretty much puts to rest any claims of perceived impartiality.
Let’s put this plainly: the al-Bashir regime is a threat to its neighbors and a threat to the people under its sovereignty. It arms proxy forces and actively destabilizes any rivals. It is a listed Terror-Supporting Regime. It is one of the last places on earth where the abomination of Slavery can still thrive.
The only thing the South Sudanese have to say to the regime is “Good-bye”.
The only things, the *only* things that should be being discussed in Washington tomorrow are those matters that will allow for a referendum in the South, a parallel referendum in Abyei, and what needs to be prepared for the possible permanent secession of the South.
Oh, if there is time on the agenda, I’d tolerate Ambassador Gration taking the time to ask the regime representative when al-Bashir will surrender to his International Arrest Warrant and face the charges against him.
Other than that all, there is nothing to talk about.
***
End Notes:
Maps for reference are linked in the text, above.
Recent Sudan news articles related to the matter of Sudan include:
Sudan requires Aid NGO’s to restructure before being allowed back into Darfur.
Human Rights Watch calls upon the U.N. to keep its Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Sudan.
Sudan barge convoy attacked, regime forces implicated.
U.N. Human Rights Special Rapporteur reports on Sudan.
South Sudan leader places forces on war footing.
U.N. keeps Human Rights Investigator for Sudan.
Referenced matter in the text regarding J. Scott Gration; also the Washington conference:
J. Scott Gration claims Sudan Genocide “over”.
Q & A from Reuters about the Washington D.C. conference on the implementation of the Naivasha Comprehensive Peace Agreement.
General Information on Places and People referenced in the text are all available online at Wikipedia. As with any politically sensitive topic, please carefully check all sources cited there.
When the world news media turns its attention to the Republic of the Sudan these days, it almost always casts its gaze on the troubles in the Darfur region. Given that those troubles have bordered on (and been labeled as) Genocide, it is in many ways a good thing that the media looks first there. The Darfur conflict is both a tragic example of the treatment a centralized authoritarian state gives to a (relatively) recently-incorporated territory and a flash-point for border battles between the Sudanese state and its enemies in the Republic of Chad. The central authority bases itself upon the Arab Supremacy doctrine as well as the concept of concentration of power in the hands of the leadership in Khartoum. But there is more to be seen about the Sudan; for one, there are defensible historical reasons why the very idea of “Sudan” is not, and should not be, what is drawn on the map.
Speaking of maps, here is a modern political map of the Sudan. Here is a map showing the political regions of the Sudan (as of 2006). Please refer to these as needed as we proceed.
The Upper Nile and its surrounding territories were little known to outsiders other than in glimpses and tales of the interior lands until the Arabianization of the northeastern tribes and kingdoms had gone on long enough that a small Sultanate had come to be in the region of the Third Cataract of the Nile and Arab colonization along the Red Sea coast had penetrated a small distance inland… a process that took nearly a thousand years. Islam did spread, but the idea of Islamic States as per se did not go much beyond the replacement of indigenous Nubian sub-states in the north with Arabianized Nubian sub-states. The Blue Sultanate of the Sinnar (Sennar) region along the fertile part of the Blue Nile was the first to gain even tributary control over the many tribes of the Upper Nile, and had knowledge of tribes in the far south. This loose empire-in-miniature rose in the 16th Century and existed until 1820… when the Ottoman-dominated Egyptians came south.
Muhammad Ali Pasha, the Ottoman-installed Wali (Governor) of Egypt, had grown a bit “too big for his britches” taking the self-styled title of Khedive (overlord; viceroy) and setting out to increase his domain by exploration and conquest. Conveniently, this was also the beginning of the era of the great European interest in the exploration of the “Heart of Africa” and as a part of that, the search for “The Source of the Nile”. Through the 1840’s and on to 1879, this both encouraged Egyptian cooperation with European nations *outside the official relationship with the Ottoman Empire” and made a steady supply of European Adventurers available for employ by the Khedive. These men (and one very famous husband-wife team) worked mostly alone at the head of expeditions that established a chain of very modest garrisons along the Upper Nile. Unfortunately, the interest and availability of these Adventurers came at a price: The sudden, and instantly critical, awareness by European nations of the extent of the Slave Trade. It was everywhere. It was the major trade activity of the Arab interests in East Africa and along the Upper Nile. By any reasonable measure of economic “resource production”, it was the *only* major trade activity in those regions. Ivory-trade was a poor second in comparison, and there was basically no other trade of value except on the coast. The Khedive now told (one of his many) well-told lies to the Europeans: that by encouraging and supporting Egyptian control of the Upper Nile, his administration would see an end to Slave-taking and –trading.
Some believed him; others thought they could use this as an opportunity; most of the Egyptian administrators put in place by the expeditions simply ignored it. Worse, while the Slave Trade had been tied before to Red Sea ports and the East African Arab kingdom of Zanzibar and severely limited by the dangers that befell outsiders who ventured very far inland into East Africa, the explorers (both European Adventurers and Arab Slavers) were gaining the ability to penetrate farther into the countryside. By the 1870’s, heretofore unvisited tribes and territories were being brought into contact. This contact might bring negotiation and the tribe told of its place under administration, or it might just as easily bring death, disease, and enslavement; it simply depended on who got there first.
One of the earliest such places was Darfur, and it at least had the veneer of Islamization to protect *some* of its people from the Slave Trade. The confluence of the Niles was another early place of Egyptian administration, and Khartoum grew to become a moderately large center of trade linked overland along the Blue Nile and the desert to the Red Sea ports. Later, expeditions from the north established a tenuous presence far up the White Nile called “Equatoria” (part of which is the modern South Sudanese province of the same name) and explorers working from Zanzibar had mostly mapped the region of the northern Great Lakes of Africa, unveiling the strong tribal kingdom of Buganda in the process. By reaching Equatoria, the extent of the holding was well past the Arabianized tribes. This was tribal Sub-Saharan Africa. Where ever the European presence asserted control the Slave Trade was in peril, but where the Slave Trade came first, their depredations either ruined the countryside or turned the native tribals implacably hostile to outsiders.
The European influence eventually began to turn the tide against Slavery as an industry, but it also instantly destroyed the source of wealth of many powerful people in the newly-Egyptian Sudan (and in Egypt). The repression of Slavery was along with epic mismanagement by the Khedive the cause, but not the *declared* cause, of the end of Ottoman-Egyptian rule. First the Arab population of Egypt rose “against Foreign influence” and their own overlords in the Urabi Revolt (1879~1882) which was put down by British intervention in the end, resulting in the not-entirely-wanted by anyone British control of Egypt for the next ~70 years. Then came the unexpected: the Arabianized tribes of the Sudan rose in revolt… under a unifying leader.
The Mahdi (“guided one”; by implication the 12th Imam revealed) led the first “modern” jihad, raised a massive army of followers, and set to very efficiently destroying Egyptian control of the Upper Nile. Militarily, he was an astounding success. Darfur was captured, extending his rule west from the Sudd; Egyptian garrisons were cut off and destroyed above and below the confluences of the Nile, and fortified Khartoum was besieged and taken (only days before a relief column approached, by the way). The British and Egyptian forces that could do so simply withdrew; the rest mostly died. We’ll never know if the Mahdi would have been a great leader of a partly-unified Sudan, though. He died but six months after the fall of Khartoum. His replacement at the head of the Mahdiyah (Mahdist government) was a more conventional Arabianized tribal leader and his campaigns to extend the control of his rule was thwarted against Ethiopia, bested by Anglo-Egyptian troops when he attempted to invade Egypt proper, and eventually turned back from eastern ambitions by Italian colonial troops from Eritrea. With all that going on, he never made much of a significant effort to take Equatoria and the piecemeal efforts that did happen were countered by the garrison of men cut off there under the enigmatic Emin Pasha (another European Adventurer supposedly in Egyptian employ). But contact with Equatoria was cut, and as of 1889 it was believed that the garrison’s withdrawal *up* the White Nile meant the loss of the territory. But “lost” how? It had, after all, barely been “found”.
The claim was restored by a series of great adventures, including an appallingly difficult passage of a relief expedition traveling from the Congo through unexplored terrain (modern Ituri of the D. R. Congo) and then down to Zanzibar, taking from 1886~90. The British military expedition (counter-invasion) from 1896~98 came from the north and decisively defeated the Mahdiyah and brought “modern” logistical transport to the Upper Nile. A railroad reached as far as Khartoum; steam vessels vastly superior in number and quality to the small steamers used by the Egyptian garrisons now reached the far navigable extreme of the White Nile. Communication was now no longer an issue. Meanwhile, in East Africa, Zanzibar had become a British Protectorate (by force) and the Anglo-German agreement (1890) on a division of territorial influence on the mainland had brought a British East Africa Company into being. This holding expanded through what is now Kenya and in 1892 included a British Protectorate over the Kingdom of Buganda. The White Nile, from Khartoum to the Great Lakes, was under British colonial control. But a line drawn on a map placed most all of Equatoria within Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, and the rest assigned to the new Uganda Protectorate in 1894.
Clearly that line was drawn in the wrong place.
The current administration of the Republic of the Sudan inherited that line, and others drawn to make borders with what are now Ethiopia, Eritrea, Chad, the Central African Republic and the D. R. Congo. But from the very moment of post-colonial Independence in 1956, those lines proved to be a catalyst for an explosion. In the case of Equatoria, the South of Sudan (South Sudan) went to war against the Khartoum regime from day one. Only the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972 put a hold on the conflict, and that proved to be a weak protection. In 1983 the South Sudanese went back to war. After horrible hardship, South Sudan won a kind of autonomy in the Naivasha Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005. Meanwhile, the Khartoum regime had gone through 50 years of military juntas and strongmen, first Arab Nationalists, then Marxist-inspired Nationalists, and most recently waves of Islamic Fundamentalist Nationalists… the last being the regime of Omar al-Bashir (since 1989), the ICC-indicted criminal leader of the Genocide against Darfur.
Under the al-Bashir government, Khartoum has almost totally reneged upon the terms of peaceful co-existence. Development in the South has been near-nil except for the precious oil fields along the Abyei part of the line-of-division which feed foreign hard currency to the regime (and oil to the People’s Republic of China, by the way). The South Sudan autonomous administration has withdrawn from cooperation with Khartoum since 2005 over these slights… and more. Since the 1980’s, Slave-taking has returned in the Sudan, with reliable reports of over ten (perhaps tens of) thousand people taken from the southern region into Slavery.
There is only one real benefit of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, though…
…the South Sudanese don’t have to *stay* Sudanese.
The terms of the agreement specifically call for a referendum for independence for South Sudan after six years. That would be in 2011.
There is a conference on the 2005 Naivasha Comprehensive Peace Agreement being held in Washington D.C. on Tuesday of this week, hosted by American Special Envoy to the Sudan J. Scott Gration. The so-called “North” (the Khartoum regime) will be there. The South Sudanese will as well. So will interested parties from P. R. China, the United Nations, the Arab League, Britain, Italy and Egypt.
The host, by the way, gave a statement to the Washington Post last week that the Genocide in Darfur “is over”. Right then; that pretty much puts to rest any claims of perceived impartiality.
Let’s put this plainly: the al-Bashir regime is a threat to its neighbors and a threat to the people under its sovereignty. It arms proxy forces and actively destabilizes any rivals. It is a listed Terror-Supporting Regime. It is one of the last places on earth where the abomination of Slavery can still thrive.
The only thing the South Sudanese have to say to the regime is “Good-bye”.
The only things, the *only* things that should be being discussed in Washington tomorrow are those matters that will allow for a referendum in the South, a parallel referendum in Abyei, and what needs to be prepared for the possible permanent secession of the South.
Oh, if there is time on the agenda, I’d tolerate Ambassador Gration taking the time to ask the regime representative when al-Bashir will surrender to his International Arrest Warrant and face the charges against him.
Other than that all, there is nothing to talk about.
***
End Notes:
Maps for reference are linked in the text, above.
Recent Sudan news articles related to the matter of Sudan include:
Sudan requires Aid NGO’s to restructure before being allowed back into Darfur.
Human Rights Watch calls upon the U.N. to keep its Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Sudan.
Sudan barge convoy attacked, regime forces implicated.
U.N. Human Rights Special Rapporteur reports on Sudan.
South Sudan leader places forces on war footing.
U.N. keeps Human Rights Investigator for Sudan.
Referenced matter in the text regarding J. Scott Gration; also the Washington conference:
J. Scott Gration claims Sudan Genocide “over”.
Q & A from Reuters about the Washington D.C. conference on the implementation of the Naivasha Comprehensive Peace Agreement.
General Information on Places and People referenced in the text are all available online at Wikipedia. As with any politically sensitive topic, please carefully check all sources cited there.
Monday, June 15, 2009
The Weekly N&C for June 15th, 2009
Rather than distract readers further from the most important breaking international news story of the day, I am holding back the scheduled Weekly Item to make space for this:
News on the Iranian Popular Uprising
There are a number of good sources for English-language readers on this event. They are most all running far ahead of the major media outlets. Here are three that are covering what is happening in almost real-time:
Alerts from Tehran at tehranbureau.com
Michael J. Totten on the insurrection. Check his main page for new items as they come in as well.
NIAC Insights, an Iranian-American weblog with superb information.
***
It is becoming clear that the Ahmedinejad regime is likely turning against the Theocracy for its own Autocratic purposes. One public sign of that is that the Pasdaran (Guardians of the Islamic Revolution; IRGC) have felt it necessary to have imported revolutionary stalwarts from Hezbollah (and other client groups) to re-enforce the state security apparatus at home in Iran. They are likely afraid that Iranian troops / police won't fire upon demonstrating Iranian civilians.
I'll assert that all revolutions either institutionalize (and stop being revolutionary regimes) or fall prey to an autocrat. What makes each revolution different is not *when* it ends... but *how*. What we are watching in Iran now may well be the *how*.
M. H. Mousavi appeared in public at the protests today in Tehran, surrounded by an enormous crowd. The Ahmadinejad government also held "victory" rallies. The time may be coming for Tehran's famous protest mobs to be seen again in full force... likely in support of both factions.
For all our sakes, let this end with freedom for Iran. Somehow.
News on the Iranian Popular Uprising
There are a number of good sources for English-language readers on this event. They are most all running far ahead of the major media outlets. Here are three that are covering what is happening in almost real-time:
Alerts from Tehran at tehranbureau.com
Michael J. Totten on the insurrection. Check his main page for new items as they come in as well.
NIAC Insights, an Iranian-American weblog with superb information.
***
It is becoming clear that the Ahmedinejad regime is likely turning against the Theocracy for its own Autocratic purposes. One public sign of that is that the Pasdaran (Guardians of the Islamic Revolution; IRGC) have felt it necessary to have imported revolutionary stalwarts from Hezbollah (and other client groups) to re-enforce the state security apparatus at home in Iran. They are likely afraid that Iranian troops / police won't fire upon demonstrating Iranian civilians.
I'll assert that all revolutions either institutionalize (and stop being revolutionary regimes) or fall prey to an autocrat. What makes each revolution different is not *when* it ends... but *how*. What we are watching in Iran now may well be the *how*.
M. H. Mousavi appeared in public at the protests today in Tehran, surrounded by an enormous crowd. The Ahmadinejad government also held "victory" rallies. The time may be coming for Tehran's famous protest mobs to be seen again in full force... likely in support of both factions.
For all our sakes, let this end with freedom for Iran. Somehow.
Monday, May 18, 2009
The Weekly N&C for May 18th, 2009
In another world
*Note: the following scenario is illustrative only; no such operation has ever been mooted in any open-source way, ever.*
With the imminent collapse of the central authority of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK; North Korea), it has been necessary to prepare alternatives to allowing the nuclear arsenal of that state to fall under the control of those factions or individuals may act outside the constraints upon a state actor. The ongoing turmoil in the command authority that began shortly after the demise of the head of state is apparently accelerating, and it is judged very likely that the unitary structure of the DPRK Army may well be compromised. Were that to result in a further fragmentation of authority, it is deemed an unacceptable risk that said weapons might be used or more likely sold by opportunistic elements in the command authority. In meetings this week, the United Nations Security Council has resolved to call upon the interim government to assure the security of all Weapons of Mass Destruction possessed by the DPRK, in specific requiring demonstrable efforts to disable from use all nuclear armaments and their associated ballistic missile delivery systems. As of this writing, no reply has been made to the UNSC by the interim administration.
Sources in the Japanese Self-Defense Ministry have provided an outline of what course of action is impending: Based upon the decades of careful placement of agents in positions of vital importance in the scientific ranks (and likely the military officer corps) of North Korea, Japanese military intelligence is in possession of information on the location and security precautions surrounding the (sources say) 11 nuclear weapons in the North Korean arsenal. A massive operational contingency plan is in place, calling for the insertion of over 6,000 elite members of the Airborne Regiment and Special Forces, backed by a seizure of air superiority, naval support, and advanced intelligence capabilities that would provide technological and information dominance in the region of the targeted objectives. The source also implied strongly that cooperation with elements of the Republic of Korea (ROK; South Korea) Armed Forces and Intelligence Services is a vital part of this plan. Given the serious nature of the situation, it is clear that this information has become public to assure the people of Japan, and of neighboring states equally threatened by the fall of the Kim regime, that in a crisis the nuclear arsenal of the DPRK will not fall into the hands of rogue military leaders or terrorists.
Are you reassured, yet?
…or does the improbability of that scenario make you stifle a laugh?
…or perhaps you are just stunned by the idea that sources within a government would let such a thing out to a media source, for any reason.
Well, take a moment to compose yourselves, and then let’s take this matter on.
It is entirely immaterial as to whether the hypothetical-Self-Defense-Force of the scenario actually has such a plan. It is sufficient for purposes of this argument that the real Self Defense Force of Japan does have (at least on the Table of Organization) or will likely soon have all the elements cited above, excepting perhaps the massive number of agents infiltrated into the DPRK. Given the decades of interaction between the two nations since the 1950’s, it is not beyond believability that by building on clandestine relationships some (un-named) Japanese Secret Agency could have placed hundreds of agents at various levels, and that is particularly plausible to both North and South Korea observers as those two nations have been engaged in a covert campaign for as long as they have been at war. The elements of “possibility” must exist, and that is enough for now.
If the reader is willing to suspend disbelief this far, then we can use this scenario to make a case about the conduct of the “sources” and the “media” in this case.
The question in challenge: Is anyone’s interest served by “sources” leaking this to the “media”?
If by anyone, one would mean: The agents in place; The soldiers tasked with the mission; The forces of the friendly country said to be acting in support of the mission, or; The government whom the “source” was a part of (in the scenario, Japan)…
Then the answer would be, in sequence: NO; NO; NO, and; well, that depends on how feckless they really are.
If by anyone one meant the “media”, the question would be almost self-answering. The “media” runs stories like this for the perceived benefit to the media, and perhaps that of the reporter. It was a scoop, don't you know.
For one thing that the modern way of war and politics should have already taught any observer is that the enemy reads the news too. To cite but a single example, al-Qaeda's propaganda efforts are full of references to recent events, news reports, and other timely information (partly to prove they are still alive, of course).
That would mean, in the case of the scenario, that after such a story runs in the “media” the agents in place are subject to redoubled efforts by the foe’s counter-intelligence forces, the information on location of and security measures at the target sites is likely to be in flux and defensive preparations will generally be heightened. That pretty much covers the NO; NO; NO part of the answer.
But in regards to the “source”, the answer gets wrapped up in the politics of the moment. Perhaps the “source” is opposed to the proposed plan; Letting out word of it might well torpedo the whole plan. Perhaps the “source” was acting under instructions to say there was such a plan to make the leadership of the government ‘look tough’ for political gain. Perhaps the “source” was sent out to run a fake; there is a plan, it is so risky that no one in the government seriously believes it would ever be used, so someone higher up than the “source” has decided leaking out the plan will cause some intended action on the part of the “foe” (like massively tightening security over their weapons arsenal). It might even be a crude negotiating ploy, were there to be secret discussions on the side happening to get an allied power of the “foe” to quietly take ‘temporary’ possession of the weapons, or to take away the cause for action from a third-party (from the scenario: “don’t worry, Americans; we’ve got a plan”).
None of those possible explanations is particularly beneficial taken as they are.
Were there to *actually* be a plan like the one in the scenario, and it were the only viable option even if the chance of failure or incomplete success was high, such a leak would be disastrous. In fact, it would arguably be criminal.
Now set aside the scenario as presented, and welcome back to the real world.
Pakistan is in the midst of a threatening situation, with Taliban forces within 100 km (60 miles) of the capital, Islamabad, and a weakened central government.
Pakistan is also determined to improve and increase its nuclear arsenal, from the ~100 weapons believed available now.
It has even been openly questioned in the mass media as to how secure the Pakistani nuclear weapons really are.
Someone thought it was a good idea to talk about the situation in Pakistan in the same terms as the fanciful scenario presented here.
Are you reassured, yet?
***
End Notes:
All End Notes are linked in the text, above.
*Note: the following scenario is illustrative only; no such operation has ever been mooted in any open-source way, ever.*
With the imminent collapse of the central authority of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK; North Korea), it has been necessary to prepare alternatives to allowing the nuclear arsenal of that state to fall under the control of those factions or individuals may act outside the constraints upon a state actor. The ongoing turmoil in the command authority that began shortly after the demise of the head of state is apparently accelerating, and it is judged very likely that the unitary structure of the DPRK Army may well be compromised. Were that to result in a further fragmentation of authority, it is deemed an unacceptable risk that said weapons might be used or more likely sold by opportunistic elements in the command authority. In meetings this week, the United Nations Security Council has resolved to call upon the interim government to assure the security of all Weapons of Mass Destruction possessed by the DPRK, in specific requiring demonstrable efforts to disable from use all nuclear armaments and their associated ballistic missile delivery systems. As of this writing, no reply has been made to the UNSC by the interim administration.
Sources in the Japanese Self-Defense Ministry have provided an outline of what course of action is impending: Based upon the decades of careful placement of agents in positions of vital importance in the scientific ranks (and likely the military officer corps) of North Korea, Japanese military intelligence is in possession of information on the location and security precautions surrounding the (sources say) 11 nuclear weapons in the North Korean arsenal. A massive operational contingency plan is in place, calling for the insertion of over 6,000 elite members of the Airborne Regiment and Special Forces, backed by a seizure of air superiority, naval support, and advanced intelligence capabilities that would provide technological and information dominance in the region of the targeted objectives. The source also implied strongly that cooperation with elements of the Republic of Korea (ROK; South Korea) Armed Forces and Intelligence Services is a vital part of this plan. Given the serious nature of the situation, it is clear that this information has become public to assure the people of Japan, and of neighboring states equally threatened by the fall of the Kim regime, that in a crisis the nuclear arsenal of the DPRK will not fall into the hands of rogue military leaders or terrorists.
Are you reassured, yet?
…or does the improbability of that scenario make you stifle a laugh?
…or perhaps you are just stunned by the idea that sources within a government would let such a thing out to a media source, for any reason.
Well, take a moment to compose yourselves, and then let’s take this matter on.
It is entirely immaterial as to whether the hypothetical-Self-Defense-Force of the scenario actually has such a plan. It is sufficient for purposes of this argument that the real Self Defense Force of Japan does have (at least on the Table of Organization) or will likely soon have all the elements cited above, excepting perhaps the massive number of agents infiltrated into the DPRK. Given the decades of interaction between the two nations since the 1950’s, it is not beyond believability that by building on clandestine relationships some (un-named) Japanese Secret Agency could have placed hundreds of agents at various levels, and that is particularly plausible to both North and South Korea observers as those two nations have been engaged in a covert campaign for as long as they have been at war. The elements of “possibility” must exist, and that is enough for now.
If the reader is willing to suspend disbelief this far, then we can use this scenario to make a case about the conduct of the “sources” and the “media” in this case.
The question in challenge: Is anyone’s interest served by “sources” leaking this to the “media”?
If by anyone, one would mean: The agents in place; The soldiers tasked with the mission; The forces of the friendly country said to be acting in support of the mission, or; The government whom the “source” was a part of (in the scenario, Japan)…
Then the answer would be, in sequence: NO; NO; NO, and; well, that depends on how feckless they really are.
If by anyone one meant the “media”, the question would be almost self-answering. The “media” runs stories like this for the perceived benefit to the media, and perhaps that of the reporter. It was a scoop, don't you know.
For one thing that the modern way of war and politics should have already taught any observer is that the enemy reads the news too. To cite but a single example, al-Qaeda's propaganda efforts are full of references to recent events, news reports, and other timely information (partly to prove they are still alive, of course).
That would mean, in the case of the scenario, that after such a story runs in the “media” the agents in place are subject to redoubled efforts by the foe’s counter-intelligence forces, the information on location of and security measures at the target sites is likely to be in flux and defensive preparations will generally be heightened. That pretty much covers the NO; NO; NO part of the answer.
But in regards to the “source”, the answer gets wrapped up in the politics of the moment. Perhaps the “source” is opposed to the proposed plan; Letting out word of it might well torpedo the whole plan. Perhaps the “source” was acting under instructions to say there was such a plan to make the leadership of the government ‘look tough’ for political gain. Perhaps the “source” was sent out to run a fake; there is a plan, it is so risky that no one in the government seriously believes it would ever be used, so someone higher up than the “source” has decided leaking out the plan will cause some intended action on the part of the “foe” (like massively tightening security over their weapons arsenal). It might even be a crude negotiating ploy, were there to be secret discussions on the side happening to get an allied power of the “foe” to quietly take ‘temporary’ possession of the weapons, or to take away the cause for action from a third-party (from the scenario: “don’t worry, Americans; we’ve got a plan”).
None of those possible explanations is particularly beneficial taken as they are.
Were there to *actually* be a plan like the one in the scenario, and it were the only viable option even if the chance of failure or incomplete success was high, such a leak would be disastrous. In fact, it would arguably be criminal.
Now set aside the scenario as presented, and welcome back to the real world.
Pakistan is in the midst of a threatening situation, with Taliban forces within 100 km (60 miles) of the capital, Islamabad, and a weakened central government.
Pakistan is also determined to improve and increase its nuclear arsenal, from the ~100 weapons believed available now.
It has even been openly questioned in the mass media as to how secure the Pakistani nuclear weapons really are.
Someone thought it was a good idea to talk about the situation in Pakistan in the same terms as the fanciful scenario presented here.
Are you reassured, yet?
***
End Notes:
All End Notes are linked in the text, above.
Monday, May 4, 2009
The Weekly N&C for May 4th, 2009
Two thousand years in the making
Roughly speaking, that is; but who’s counting? So at the risk of leaving the impression that one has wandered into an episode of "Mysterious Missives of the Monastic Mystics" on some cable channel, let’s drag this out a bit. What if…?
. One of the avowed goals of Orthodox Judaism could be made real, or proven forever lost.
.. The Vatican could regain control *and sovereignty* over many of the Christian pilgrimage sites of the Holy Land for the first time since, well, since the end of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
… A real and lasting accommodation could be reached between Israel and the Vatican, and thus with the largest Christian faction still inclined to support Palestinian Arab causes over those of the nation of Israel.
…. But,
….. The cost would be the opening of a legal door through which Islamic states could claim exclusive rights to the grounds of Mount Moriah and all the structures thereon.
…… The same Mount Moriah known as Har haBáyit (The Temple Mount) and as al-haram al-qudsī ash-sharīf (The Noble Sanctuary).
If you were to speak for the Government of Israel, would *you* make that deal?
Or a deal that looked a lot like that?
Well it seems that, if your name is President Shimon Peres of Israel, you might just try to pull it off.
Alright; enough with the Raiders-of-the-Lost-Da-Vinci-Code talk. But really, there is something very serious about all this, and the above-linked article only touches upon just how incredibly convoluted a territorial and material sovereignty issue is being brought to the fore in the weeks before the May 11th ~15th Papal visit to Israel and the Palestine Territories.
The short form is this: Various sects of various Abrahamic religions have claim to various sites considered sacred in their various traditions within the boundaries of the former Palestine Mandate Territory. Several of them claim the same places, but not the same structures. All of them have pressed these claims for centuries (millennium in many cases) and in regard to a few of the sites have reached accommodation with rivals to either share or partition access to them. But from the perspective of legal jurisdiction, those sites that are within the boundaries of Israel are Israeli territory, and those within the Palestinian National Authority are to be part of PNA territory at the time of a two-state resolution to the occupation thereof by Israel.
So to take the example of the Church of the Nativity, considered sacred by both Christianity and Islam: it is administered jointly by Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Armenian Apostolic authorities; it is physically located in Beit Lahm (Bethlehem) in the PNA-administered West Bank; it is under obligatory protection by the Israeli occupation. The sovereignty issue is purely one of recognizing the PNA; once a Palestinian state comes fully into being that site will be within that sovereign territory… except the extant agreements on the administration of the site grant some privileges to the religious occupants. But the territoriality of the site is not in question.
The same sort of arrangement has traditionally been offered regarding the various sites fully under Israeli control, whether Jewish, Christian and/or Moslem, even granting privileges to the administration of the Qubbat as-Sakhra (Dome of the Rock) and the al Masjid al-Aqsa (al-Aqsa Mosque) under an Islamic trust. But these are *arrangements*, not concessions of sovereignty. The PNA would love to have sovereign control of the Noble Sanctuary in its entirety, though... more on that below.
In about a week, there will be a visit to the Holy Land by Pope Benedict XVI. Apparently, President Shimon Peres of Israel has instructed his office to pressure the government to transfer sovereignty over six Christian sites to the Vatican.
Transfer
Give
It would be entirely reasonable at this point to ask “Why on Earth would the government of Israel create extraterritorial enclaves for Christian holy sites, especially given the claims of other religions to their respective sites?”
It can’t be about money; no compensation has apparently been offered.
It *might* be about something else, though. The Temple Treasures.
There is the vaguest possibility that, contrary to all denials by the Vatican to date, the Holy See does have in its possession (somewhere) what remains of the relics of the Second Temple that were taken as prize by the Roman Empire (as immortalized by the depiction of the sack on the Arch of Titus in Rome).
At least one researcher has made the claim that the Treasures might still exist, and has an idea who controls them now.
If, and I’ll grant that is a *big* if, the Vatican has the ability to see to the transfer of those remaining relics to the nation of Israel, that would be an answer to one of the dreams of the Orthodox sects of Judaism; to have the valued items of the Second Temple restored to Jerusalem.
But, with all things comes a price.
To establish the precedent of granting extraterritoriality to the six sites desired by the Vatican throws open the door to the claims upon the Noble Sanctuary… which, in case it hasn’t come to mind yet, is built upon Mount Moriah; the very ground believed by the faithful (and a lot of researchers) to be the site of the Second Temple.
Should Israel set aside most all normal diplomatic concerns and grant extraterritoriality to the Vatican claims, the most likely result will be a hardening of the Islamic Arab claim to the Noble Sanctuary. If that were to occur, Israel would be faced with the choice of granting some kind of equivalent status to the Islamic claims, or finding that the slim hope of ever resolving the Palestinian issue by an agreed two-state solution have been dashed upon the rocks of disappointment.
Given how badly things have gone with Gaza, and given the level of support that can be expected at this time from Israel’s traditionally closest ally, it probably isn’t worth it.
The Pope is coming to visit, with or without this matter being resolved.
Offer him a nice visit. Be nice to the pilgrims that will come to be a part of his visit.
But don’t offer extraterritorial sovereignty for the six sites. Formalize an “accommodation”, or grant further “privileges”, but don’t give them away for all the treasure in the world.
Otherwise, someone else will be lined up to “get what’s his”… even if it is yours.
***
End Notes:
Most all citations are linked in the text above.
The Vatican has issued a statement to the media on the coming visit, which addresses several other matters but does not mention the issue of seeking sovereignty over the six sites.
General Information on the particular sites and public figures mentioned in this article and in the linked citations can be found at Wikipedia. The usual rule applies: check all the sources cited by the Wiki-p entry.
Roughly speaking, that is; but who’s counting? So at the risk of leaving the impression that one has wandered into an episode of "Mysterious Missives of the Monastic Mystics" on some cable channel, let’s drag this out a bit. What if…?
. One of the avowed goals of Orthodox Judaism could be made real, or proven forever lost.
.. The Vatican could regain control *and sovereignty* over many of the Christian pilgrimage sites of the Holy Land for the first time since, well, since the end of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
… A real and lasting accommodation could be reached between Israel and the Vatican, and thus with the largest Christian faction still inclined to support Palestinian Arab causes over those of the nation of Israel.
…. But,
….. The cost would be the opening of a legal door through which Islamic states could claim exclusive rights to the grounds of Mount Moriah and all the structures thereon.
…… The same Mount Moriah known as Har haBáyit (The Temple Mount) and as al-haram al-qudsī ash-sharīf (The Noble Sanctuary).
If you were to speak for the Government of Israel, would *you* make that deal?
Or a deal that looked a lot like that?
Well it seems that, if your name is President Shimon Peres of Israel, you might just try to pull it off.
Alright; enough with the Raiders-of-the-Lost-Da-Vinci-Code talk. But really, there is something very serious about all this, and the above-linked article only touches upon just how incredibly convoluted a territorial and material sovereignty issue is being brought to the fore in the weeks before the May 11th ~15th Papal visit to Israel and the Palestine Territories.
The short form is this: Various sects of various Abrahamic religions have claim to various sites considered sacred in their various traditions within the boundaries of the former Palestine Mandate Territory. Several of them claim the same places, but not the same structures. All of them have pressed these claims for centuries (millennium in many cases) and in regard to a few of the sites have reached accommodation with rivals to either share or partition access to them. But from the perspective of legal jurisdiction, those sites that are within the boundaries of Israel are Israeli territory, and those within the Palestinian National Authority are to be part of PNA territory at the time of a two-state resolution to the occupation thereof by Israel.
So to take the example of the Church of the Nativity, considered sacred by both Christianity and Islam: it is administered jointly by Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Armenian Apostolic authorities; it is physically located in Beit Lahm (Bethlehem) in the PNA-administered West Bank; it is under obligatory protection by the Israeli occupation. The sovereignty issue is purely one of recognizing the PNA; once a Palestinian state comes fully into being that site will be within that sovereign territory… except the extant agreements on the administration of the site grant some privileges to the religious occupants. But the territoriality of the site is not in question.
The same sort of arrangement has traditionally been offered regarding the various sites fully under Israeli control, whether Jewish, Christian and/or Moslem, even granting privileges to the administration of the Qubbat as-Sakhra (Dome of the Rock) and the al Masjid al-Aqsa (al-Aqsa Mosque) under an Islamic trust. But these are *arrangements*, not concessions of sovereignty. The PNA would love to have sovereign control of the Noble Sanctuary in its entirety, though... more on that below.
In about a week, there will be a visit to the Holy Land by Pope Benedict XVI. Apparently, President Shimon Peres of Israel has instructed his office to pressure the government to transfer sovereignty over six Christian sites to the Vatican.
Transfer
Give
On Sunday, according to the report, Beit Hanassi requested that the Interior Ministry sign documents conceding sovereignty on the sites, however the interior minister refused."Beit Hanassi" is the Presidential House of Israel; "Yishai" is Interior Minister Eli Yishai, the cabinet minister who would be actually responsible for proposing such a matter to the government.
Yishai was quoted as saying that he opposes all yielding of sovereignty.
It would be entirely reasonable at this point to ask “Why on Earth would the government of Israel create extraterritorial enclaves for Christian holy sites, especially given the claims of other religions to their respective sites?”
It can’t be about money; no compensation has apparently been offered.
It *might* be about something else, though. The Temple Treasures.
There is the vaguest possibility that, contrary to all denials by the Vatican to date, the Holy See does have in its possession (somewhere) what remains of the relics of the Second Temple that were taken as prize by the Roman Empire (as immortalized by the depiction of the sack on the Arch of Titus in Rome).
At least one researcher has made the claim that the Treasures might still exist, and has an idea who controls them now.
If, and I’ll grant that is a *big* if, the Vatican has the ability to see to the transfer of those remaining relics to the nation of Israel, that would be an answer to one of the dreams of the Orthodox sects of Judaism; to have the valued items of the Second Temple restored to Jerusalem.
But, with all things comes a price.
To establish the precedent of granting extraterritoriality to the six sites desired by the Vatican throws open the door to the claims upon the Noble Sanctuary… which, in case it hasn’t come to mind yet, is built upon Mount Moriah; the very ground believed by the faithful (and a lot of researchers) to be the site of the Second Temple.
Should Israel set aside most all normal diplomatic concerns and grant extraterritoriality to the Vatican claims, the most likely result will be a hardening of the Islamic Arab claim to the Noble Sanctuary. If that were to occur, Israel would be faced with the choice of granting some kind of equivalent status to the Islamic claims, or finding that the slim hope of ever resolving the Palestinian issue by an agreed two-state solution have been dashed upon the rocks of disappointment.
Given how badly things have gone with Gaza, and given the level of support that can be expected at this time from Israel’s traditionally closest ally, it probably isn’t worth it.
The Pope is coming to visit, with or without this matter being resolved.
Offer him a nice visit. Be nice to the pilgrims that will come to be a part of his visit.
But don’t offer extraterritorial sovereignty for the six sites. Formalize an “accommodation”, or grant further “privileges”, but don’t give them away for all the treasure in the world.
Otherwise, someone else will be lined up to “get what’s his”… even if it is yours.
***
End Notes:
Most all citations are linked in the text above.
The Vatican has issued a statement to the media on the coming visit, which addresses several other matters but does not mention the issue of seeking sovereignty over the six sites.
General Information on the particular sites and public figures mentioned in this article and in the linked citations can be found at Wikipedia. The usual rule applies: check all the sources cited by the Wiki-p entry.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Choice
Given the way this week has gone, and the unfortunate fact that what was prepared for The Weekly N&C for April 27th, 2009, has been overtaken by ordinary news reports, I am making the choice to concentrate efforts on next week's push. There will be no The Weekly for the 27th.
My regrets to any of you who were patiently waiting, and I hope you'll look forward to Monday's item.
My regrets to any of you who were patiently waiting, and I hope you'll look forward to Monday's item.
Monday, April 20, 2009
The Weekly N&C for April 20th, 2009
How bad is it at Durban II?
The answer to that is rather different depending upon what one’s political agenda is. “Durban II”, or more correctly the United Nations –sponsored World Conference against Racism (WCAR) 2009, Durban Review Conference, is supposed to be one of the premier international dialogues on Human Rights. However, the ongoing meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, is living up to the reputation earned at the first session at Durban, South Africa, in 2001… of being an open exercise in grievance-mongering by bands of agenda-driven non-European nations and their NGO supporters.
Allow for a moment a brief recapitulation of the inherent contradictions carried over from Durban I:
Slavery and Colonialism – much ado about reparations for the Atlantic slave trade, so much that even the then-President of Senegal was appalled by the single-minded greed associated with targeting the European nations historically involved in such; an entirely unwarranted conflation of Colonialism (specifically Imperialism) in Africa with the slave trade; no mention what so ever of either the North African or Arabian slave trades nor the roughly contemporaneous slave-taking and selling of the Ottoman Empire. The final document produced by Durban I managed to soft-pedal the issue by condemning the history of slavery but stopping short of openly advocating reparations.
Israel, Zionism and Racism – A blatant attempt was made by the Arab League representatives to resurrect the Zionism=Racism charge long a part of U.N. General Assembly speeches, to codify it in a diplomatic document and to update it (for the media, apparently) by associating Israeli acts with Apartheid. To call that a stretch of the facts is probably the kindest thing one can say about that… unless one is former-President J. Carter of the U.S.A. who has sold books and speaking engagements based on his willingness to make that claim publicly. This item as well didn’t make it into the final document as a direct charge, but the intent of the language was so obvious that neither the U.S.A. nor Israel attended the conference in protest.
Oh, and one more note about process, if you please.
The Durban I final statement, like all major summit and international conference statements, was entirely written by diplomats and staffers *before* the Conference opened. The Conference itself was simply the public opportunity for all the parties with vested political interests in what would be produced to stand up and give speeches on the topic and get their pictures taken by the world’s mass media. It would take a particularly bad (Khrushchev banging his shoe on the podium –level bad) case of diplomatic loss-of-manners to throw things into disorder. As all the invited nations to such events already know the final document’s wording before the meeting, the acceptable thing to do if a nation (or leader) can not tolerate the terms is to simply not show up for the Conference.
So Durban I barely escaped being a total failure by producing a watered-down document of no binding value on any of the major contested issues, but not without drawing a boycott from two nations who found the final statement unacceptable: the U.S.A. on principle; Israel on grounds of self-preservation. In the end, only one measurable result occurred and it certainly wasn’t the intended result of the statement drafters… UN High Commissioner on Refugees Mary Robinson lost all support she had from the U.S.A. when it came time to renew her appointment, and shortly thereafter she lost her job.
Now fast-forward to the present. Eight years later, and a Conference under the same auspices chartered to “Review” the process that produced the Durban I statement. This time the same issues have come back, although the exact wording of the slavery terms still lacks either breadth or reparations-mongering, and one more has been thrown into the mix: The specific intention to label a number of academic and political challenges to the nature of the religion of Islam as “Islamophobia” and to find that equitable with the prohibitions against Anti-Semitism.
(I refuse to even discuss here the hysterical side of the argument, nor to attempt to develop any case that Islam teaches or advocates an ideology considered a risk to world peace, so don’t even start in on that sort of debate. Cf. the dismantlement of State Shintou in the post-World War II occupation of Japan for arguments at the time as to why destroying a religion could be considered justifiable if you really must, but do it elsewhere.)
The challenge I am more than willing to make to the WCAR II DRC final document is that it is a direct affront to the principle of law in many, many societies that investigation and political discourse upon a system of social control is not merely acceptable, but a fundamental part of the inalienable right to free speech. It certainly wasn’t always so, but like lese majeste laws, they are now considered a part of the unenlightened past (at least according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights).
Any religion (Organized Religion; one with canon law) that places itself as an instrument of law or governance *as a state* has cast aside any protections it may have had exempting it from Free Speech challenges to that system of governance. There are many examples: The instant that the State of Israel declares it is “a Jewish state”, then criticism of the applicability of religious law to the general populace *is a valid criticism of the government*; The period where the Irish Free State based its constitution upon Papal approval of all articles placed *the role of Catholic authorities* in valid claim when challenging the codification of Irish Law. But *neither* case would justify the open-ended insult of followers of either religion. That could, and should, be taken to task as sectarianism of the worst kind.
The Organization of Islamic States, in their “contribution” to the WCAR II DRC final document, has expressly placed Islam above any such distinctions.
No surprise that, really. Like pre-Reformation Catholicism, the religion and the state are one, in their view. Islam is by intent a system of governance and social order that by design results in Islamic Theocratic States. That is one (of many) reasons why nations like Malaysia find themselves on the horns of a dilemma any time they attempt to move toward a more secular form of governance, and why nationalist states like Egypt are regularly declared “apostate regimes” suitable only for re-conquest at some unspecified date unless they cast aside such secularism.
So much for the right of self-determination of each of the peoples of the world.
So much for the unalienable right to Free Speech.
Nine countries have looked upon the WCAR II DRC final statement and found it so egregiously offensive to the principles of, well of the U.N. for one thing, that they are boycotting the Geneva session.
Australia, Germany, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Poland, and the United States of America
My only question is “Why only nine?”
***
Addenda:
There is some confusion over Canada’s participation as they have sent an observer, but are not participating in the session statement.
The conference is in session right now, and President Ahmadinejad of Iran has been speaking…
He said the magic word, it seems, as several nations' representatives just walked out.
Here is a rough transcript of his remarks. Expect a proper transcript to be available soon via wire services.
Here is the FOXNews and AP version, as of now: They report that representatives from Britain, France and Canada (observer) joined the walk out.
***
End Notes:
Here was the situation as reported going into the session.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon tried to put the best face on this mess yesterday.
Here was the German Foreign Minister’s statement on their withdrawal.
Here is the General Information on WCAR I and WCAR II DRC, from wiki-p. Links in the sources will direct you to the specific statements and proceedings. As always, when using Wikipedia, please check the sources.
WCAR I, 2001, Durban, South Africa
WCAR II DRC, 2009, Geneva, Switzerland
The answer to that is rather different depending upon what one’s political agenda is. “Durban II”, or more correctly the United Nations –sponsored World Conference against Racism (WCAR) 2009, Durban Review Conference, is supposed to be one of the premier international dialogues on Human Rights. However, the ongoing meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, is living up to the reputation earned at the first session at Durban, South Africa, in 2001… of being an open exercise in grievance-mongering by bands of agenda-driven non-European nations and their NGO supporters.
Allow for a moment a brief recapitulation of the inherent contradictions carried over from Durban I:
Slavery and Colonialism – much ado about reparations for the Atlantic slave trade, so much that even the then-President of Senegal was appalled by the single-minded greed associated with targeting the European nations historically involved in such; an entirely unwarranted conflation of Colonialism (specifically Imperialism) in Africa with the slave trade; no mention what so ever of either the North African or Arabian slave trades nor the roughly contemporaneous slave-taking and selling of the Ottoman Empire. The final document produced by Durban I managed to soft-pedal the issue by condemning the history of slavery but stopping short of openly advocating reparations.
Israel, Zionism and Racism – A blatant attempt was made by the Arab League representatives to resurrect the Zionism=Racism charge long a part of U.N. General Assembly speeches, to codify it in a diplomatic document and to update it (for the media, apparently) by associating Israeli acts with Apartheid. To call that a stretch of the facts is probably the kindest thing one can say about that… unless one is former-President J. Carter of the U.S.A. who has sold books and speaking engagements based on his willingness to make that claim publicly. This item as well didn’t make it into the final document as a direct charge, but the intent of the language was so obvious that neither the U.S.A. nor Israel attended the conference in protest.
Oh, and one more note about process, if you please.
The Durban I final statement, like all major summit and international conference statements, was entirely written by diplomats and staffers *before* the Conference opened. The Conference itself was simply the public opportunity for all the parties with vested political interests in what would be produced to stand up and give speeches on the topic and get their pictures taken by the world’s mass media. It would take a particularly bad (Khrushchev banging his shoe on the podium –level bad) case of diplomatic loss-of-manners to throw things into disorder. As all the invited nations to such events already know the final document’s wording before the meeting, the acceptable thing to do if a nation (or leader) can not tolerate the terms is to simply not show up for the Conference.
So Durban I barely escaped being a total failure by producing a watered-down document of no binding value on any of the major contested issues, but not without drawing a boycott from two nations who found the final statement unacceptable: the U.S.A. on principle; Israel on grounds of self-preservation. In the end, only one measurable result occurred and it certainly wasn’t the intended result of the statement drafters… UN High Commissioner on Refugees Mary Robinson lost all support she had from the U.S.A. when it came time to renew her appointment, and shortly thereafter she lost her job.
Now fast-forward to the present. Eight years later, and a Conference under the same auspices chartered to “Review” the process that produced the Durban I statement. This time the same issues have come back, although the exact wording of the slavery terms still lacks either breadth or reparations-mongering, and one more has been thrown into the mix: The specific intention to label a number of academic and political challenges to the nature of the religion of Islam as “Islamophobia” and to find that equitable with the prohibitions against Anti-Semitism.
(I refuse to even discuss here the hysterical side of the argument, nor to attempt to develop any case that Islam teaches or advocates an ideology considered a risk to world peace, so don’t even start in on that sort of debate. Cf. the dismantlement of State Shintou in the post-World War II occupation of Japan for arguments at the time as to why destroying a religion could be considered justifiable if you really must, but do it elsewhere.)
The challenge I am more than willing to make to the WCAR II DRC final document is that it is a direct affront to the principle of law in many, many societies that investigation and political discourse upon a system of social control is not merely acceptable, but a fundamental part of the inalienable right to free speech. It certainly wasn’t always so, but like lese majeste laws, they are now considered a part of the unenlightened past (at least according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights).
Any religion (Organized Religion; one with canon law) that places itself as an instrument of law or governance *as a state* has cast aside any protections it may have had exempting it from Free Speech challenges to that system of governance. There are many examples: The instant that the State of Israel declares it is “a Jewish state”, then criticism of the applicability of religious law to the general populace *is a valid criticism of the government*; The period where the Irish Free State based its constitution upon Papal approval of all articles placed *the role of Catholic authorities* in valid claim when challenging the codification of Irish Law. But *neither* case would justify the open-ended insult of followers of either religion. That could, and should, be taken to task as sectarianism of the worst kind.
The Organization of Islamic States, in their “contribution” to the WCAR II DRC final document, has expressly placed Islam above any such distinctions.
No surprise that, really. Like pre-Reformation Catholicism, the religion and the state are one, in their view. Islam is by intent a system of governance and social order that by design results in Islamic Theocratic States. That is one (of many) reasons why nations like Malaysia find themselves on the horns of a dilemma any time they attempt to move toward a more secular form of governance, and why nationalist states like Egypt are regularly declared “apostate regimes” suitable only for re-conquest at some unspecified date unless they cast aside such secularism.
So much for the right of self-determination of each of the peoples of the world.
So much for the unalienable right to Free Speech.
Nine countries have looked upon the WCAR II DRC final statement and found it so egregiously offensive to the principles of, well of the U.N. for one thing, that they are boycotting the Geneva session.
Australia, Germany, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Poland, and the United States of America
My only question is “Why only nine?”
***
Addenda:
There is some confusion over Canada’s participation as they have sent an observer, but are not participating in the session statement.
The conference is in session right now, and President Ahmadinejad of Iran has been speaking…
He said the magic word, it seems, as several nations' representatives just walked out.
Here is a rough transcript of his remarks. Expect a proper transcript to be available soon via wire services.
Here is the FOXNews and AP version, as of now: They report that representatives from Britain, France and Canada (observer) joined the walk out.
***
End Notes:
Here was the situation as reported going into the session.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon tried to put the best face on this mess yesterday.
Here was the German Foreign Minister’s statement on their withdrawal.
Here is the General Information on WCAR I and WCAR II DRC, from wiki-p. Links in the sources will direct you to the specific statements and proceedings. As always, when using Wikipedia, please check the sources.
WCAR I, 2001, Durban, South Africa
WCAR II DRC, 2009, Geneva, Switzerland
Monday, April 13, 2009
The Weekly N&C for April 13th, 2009
Leaving Denial
It has been a longstanding matter in Arab Republic of Egypt that the greatest threat always comes from within. Neither Israel’s willingness to fight on Egyptian soil rather than their own, nor Libya’s occasional threats of border warfare are existential threats; the Israelis have no desire to attack the heartland of Egypt, and the Libyans lack the capability. But Egypt is a secular Arab nation, perhaps the definitive example of the Arab Nationalist State, and that has meant that through all the years since the rise of Jamal Abdel Nasser’s seizure of the state and his securing power in the wake of the Suez Incident (1956), there has been a single significant opposition to the power of the state: The Moslem Brotherhood. This Islamist movement has significant strength in other Arab States, but nowhere does it have such deep roots as in Egypt. While the government of Egypt makes some substantial claims that the Moslem Brotherhood participates in militant resistance to the secular state, and they are certainly advocates of such, what they actually provide to the Islamist cause is an ideological base and a large following that has been taught to believe in that thinking.
The government has been more than willing to attribute all manner of plots and affairs to the Moslem Brotherhood, has placed bans on their activities and actively pursued members of the group for crimes real… and perhaps not-so-real. But one thing that was almost insistently claimed was that the activities of such Islamist inside Egypt was an Egyptian problem, caused by and blamed on Egyptians. To consider the possibility of an outside hand influencing things was often dismissed with such canards as “Sunni militants don’t cooperate with Shiite militants”.
Where that all began to break down was when the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) appeared from within the Moslem Brotherhood’s ranks in 1980. This group came to the fore with stunning rapidity and on October 6th, 1981, committed the assassination of President Anwar El Sadat. There are a host of names associated with Khalid Al-Islambouli, the assassin who would be heard of again, elsewhere: Omar Abdel-Rahman wrote the fatwa (clerical justification under Islamic Law) for the assassination; another of the Cairo-based element was Ayman Al-Zawahiri; just to cite examples.
Astoundingly, while the Egyptian government did break the cell and arrest most all of the then-called Tanzim al-Jihad, only 5 members were executed and the bulk of the mid-rank members were released from jail after serving a few years in prison. Those members then went into wide dispersal, many to Afghanistan and Pakistan to join in the Mujahideen in the war against the Soviet invaders of Afghanistan.
But even without its most militant faction, the Moslem Brotherhood continued to inspire. In nearby Gaza of the Palestine Mandate Territory, the Palestinian wing of the Moslem Brotherhood spawned Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamat al-Islāmiyyah, the Islamic Resistance Movement, better known by its acromym: HAMAS. From its very beginning in 1987, HAMAS has proven to be the most determined Islamist movement inside the Palestinian community, and by far the most successful. Moreover, the strength that has allowed that success is of a kind not only drawn from the support of fellow believers inside Egypt but from a close, supportive relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Weapons and money flowed into HAMAS, and more; the only Palestinian militant group that has even considered implementing the particular version of Islamic Law practiced by the theocrats that run Iran is HAMAS.
So here we have a parallel linkage occurring.
EIJ members are one of the significant elements that make up al-Qaeda and implement their plots: Abdel-Rahman was a key part of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (truck bomb); Al-Zawahiri is one of “a majority” of the members of al-Qaeda’s ruling council drawn from EIJ. In the annals of al-Qaeda, EIJ formally became a part of al-Qaeda in June of 2001. But in the background, back home in Egypt, there is a wide community of support for such endeavors in the well-sown field of the Egyptian under-classes that are the political base of the current incarnation of the Moslem Brotherhood. This is just the sort of prepared ideological base that can be turned to use by active militants, just as it had been throughout the period of “open war” between the EIJ and the Egyptian government (1993~2000).
Yet at the same time, the HAMAS group is a cat’s-paw of Iran in their struggle for dominance over the Middle East. They need constant support and re-arming, and Iran is the primary facilitator for that. But one can not (as some more innocent supporters found out when they tried) simply sail a boat loaded with supplies into the Gaza Strip. The district is under strict Israeli embargo / inspection on three sides, and the Egyptian government makes at least all the right public postures about keeping their Gaza border closed as well. To get anything of value to militants into the Gaza, one has to have a route through Egypt (from somewhere, most often Sudan) leading up to the Sinai, and then access to the HAMAS-controlled smuggling tunnels into the Gaza.
There are a few sources that say the parallel linkage had become unified during the time EIJ was run by al-Zawahiri, with members being sent to Iran for training, and to work and train with Hezbollah, the Iranian front-group in Lebanon…
Oh yes, Hezbollah (Hizub’llah; Party of God), the state-within-a-state opposition to Israel’s existence and primary tool world-wide of Iran’s Pasdaran (Guardians of the Islamic Revolution; commonly abbreviated as IRGC). Now there is a shining example of Shiite extremism forged into a useful weapon for Iranian military and political goals. But such a group couldn’t possibly find any support or assistance within Egypt for its activities, could it?
The government of Egypt certainly acted as if Hezbollah’s agenda had no traction, at least until recently. Well, it seems that it is time to be leaving such denial behind:
April 9th, 2009, Egypt discovered and arrested 15 Hezbollah operatives inside Egypt planning acts of terror against the state and seeing to supplying arms to HAMAS for use against Israel.
April 12th, 2009, the details of the case became clearer and the origin of the threat to the Egyptian government was connected to the growing hostility between Egypt and Iran (over Bahrain’s sovereignty; Lebanon’s political future; and over a host of Arab reactions to recent Iranian provocations).
April 13th, 2009, the sheer size of the Hezbollah operation is unmasked, with Egyptian authorities in pursuit of 13 more Hezbollah operatives in the Sinai.
There is a lesson to be learned here, and it applies not only to the situation in Egypt:
Iran’s Pasdaran will use whatever linkage they can to gain support, where ever they can find the ground prepared.
That means not discounting an active al-Qaeda connection just because the Taliban are historically opposed to Iran. It is provable that Iranian arms are being fed into Afghanistan just as they were (and are, albeit at a lesser rate) into Iraq.
That means remembering the success Iran (via Hezbollah) has had in South America, successfully performing two major bombings in Argentina.
That means being very, very wary of the Tehran-Damascus-Caracas air link and the toleration that is being shown to Hezbollah representatives in Venezuela; the same applies to the outsized “diplomatic” presence in Nicaragua held by the Iranians right now.
If one insists on denying that the Iranians are not intent on using their capabilities to further their campaign of undeclared war, at a time and place of their choosing, then…
Then one day the arrests won’t just be happening in Egypt.
They’ll be happening where you live.
That is, if your police are as fortunate as the Egyptian authorities were this time.
***
End Notes:
All directly relevant End Notes are linked in the text.
General Information on all the Groups, Persons, and Places can be found at Wikipedia. The usual caveat applies to such, however: Check all the sources.
It has been a longstanding matter in Arab Republic of Egypt that the greatest threat always comes from within. Neither Israel’s willingness to fight on Egyptian soil rather than their own, nor Libya’s occasional threats of border warfare are existential threats; the Israelis have no desire to attack the heartland of Egypt, and the Libyans lack the capability. But Egypt is a secular Arab nation, perhaps the definitive example of the Arab Nationalist State, and that has meant that through all the years since the rise of Jamal Abdel Nasser’s seizure of the state and his securing power in the wake of the Suez Incident (1956), there has been a single significant opposition to the power of the state: The Moslem Brotherhood. This Islamist movement has significant strength in other Arab States, but nowhere does it have such deep roots as in Egypt. While the government of Egypt makes some substantial claims that the Moslem Brotherhood participates in militant resistance to the secular state, and they are certainly advocates of such, what they actually provide to the Islamist cause is an ideological base and a large following that has been taught to believe in that thinking.
The government has been more than willing to attribute all manner of plots and affairs to the Moslem Brotherhood, has placed bans on their activities and actively pursued members of the group for crimes real… and perhaps not-so-real. But one thing that was almost insistently claimed was that the activities of such Islamist inside Egypt was an Egyptian problem, caused by and blamed on Egyptians. To consider the possibility of an outside hand influencing things was often dismissed with such canards as “Sunni militants don’t cooperate with Shiite militants”.
Where that all began to break down was when the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) appeared from within the Moslem Brotherhood’s ranks in 1980. This group came to the fore with stunning rapidity and on October 6th, 1981, committed the assassination of President Anwar El Sadat. There are a host of names associated with Khalid Al-Islambouli, the assassin who would be heard of again, elsewhere: Omar Abdel-Rahman wrote the fatwa (clerical justification under Islamic Law) for the assassination; another of the Cairo-based element was Ayman Al-Zawahiri; just to cite examples.
Astoundingly, while the Egyptian government did break the cell and arrest most all of the then-called Tanzim al-Jihad, only 5 members were executed and the bulk of the mid-rank members were released from jail after serving a few years in prison. Those members then went into wide dispersal, many to Afghanistan and Pakistan to join in the Mujahideen in the war against the Soviet invaders of Afghanistan.
But even without its most militant faction, the Moslem Brotherhood continued to inspire. In nearby Gaza of the Palestine Mandate Territory, the Palestinian wing of the Moslem Brotherhood spawned Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamat al-Islāmiyyah, the Islamic Resistance Movement, better known by its acromym: HAMAS. From its very beginning in 1987, HAMAS has proven to be the most determined Islamist movement inside the Palestinian community, and by far the most successful. Moreover, the strength that has allowed that success is of a kind not only drawn from the support of fellow believers inside Egypt but from a close, supportive relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Weapons and money flowed into HAMAS, and more; the only Palestinian militant group that has even considered implementing the particular version of Islamic Law practiced by the theocrats that run Iran is HAMAS.
So here we have a parallel linkage occurring.
EIJ members are one of the significant elements that make up al-Qaeda and implement their plots: Abdel-Rahman was a key part of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (truck bomb); Al-Zawahiri is one of “a majority” of the members of al-Qaeda’s ruling council drawn from EIJ. In the annals of al-Qaeda, EIJ formally became a part of al-Qaeda in June of 2001. But in the background, back home in Egypt, there is a wide community of support for such endeavors in the well-sown field of the Egyptian under-classes that are the political base of the current incarnation of the Moslem Brotherhood. This is just the sort of prepared ideological base that can be turned to use by active militants, just as it had been throughout the period of “open war” between the EIJ and the Egyptian government (1993~2000).
Yet at the same time, the HAMAS group is a cat’s-paw of Iran in their struggle for dominance over the Middle East. They need constant support and re-arming, and Iran is the primary facilitator for that. But one can not (as some more innocent supporters found out when they tried) simply sail a boat loaded with supplies into the Gaza Strip. The district is under strict Israeli embargo / inspection on three sides, and the Egyptian government makes at least all the right public postures about keeping their Gaza border closed as well. To get anything of value to militants into the Gaza, one has to have a route through Egypt (from somewhere, most often Sudan) leading up to the Sinai, and then access to the HAMAS-controlled smuggling tunnels into the Gaza.
There are a few sources that say the parallel linkage had become unified during the time EIJ was run by al-Zawahiri, with members being sent to Iran for training, and to work and train with Hezbollah, the Iranian front-group in Lebanon…
Oh yes, Hezbollah (Hizub’llah; Party of God), the state-within-a-state opposition to Israel’s existence and primary tool world-wide of Iran’s Pasdaran (Guardians of the Islamic Revolution; commonly abbreviated as IRGC). Now there is a shining example of Shiite extremism forged into a useful weapon for Iranian military and political goals. But such a group couldn’t possibly find any support or assistance within Egypt for its activities, could it?
The government of Egypt certainly acted as if Hezbollah’s agenda had no traction, at least until recently. Well, it seems that it is time to be leaving such denial behind:
April 9th, 2009, Egypt discovered and arrested 15 Hezbollah operatives inside Egypt planning acts of terror against the state and seeing to supplying arms to HAMAS for use against Israel.
April 12th, 2009, the details of the case became clearer and the origin of the threat to the Egyptian government was connected to the growing hostility between Egypt and Iran (over Bahrain’s sovereignty; Lebanon’s political future; and over a host of Arab reactions to recent Iranian provocations).
April 13th, 2009, the sheer size of the Hezbollah operation is unmasked, with Egyptian authorities in pursuit of 13 more Hezbollah operatives in the Sinai.
There is a lesson to be learned here, and it applies not only to the situation in Egypt:
Iran’s Pasdaran will use whatever linkage they can to gain support, where ever they can find the ground prepared.
That means not discounting an active al-Qaeda connection just because the Taliban are historically opposed to Iran. It is provable that Iranian arms are being fed into Afghanistan just as they were (and are, albeit at a lesser rate) into Iraq.
That means remembering the success Iran (via Hezbollah) has had in South America, successfully performing two major bombings in Argentina.
That means being very, very wary of the Tehran-Damascus-Caracas air link and the toleration that is being shown to Hezbollah representatives in Venezuela; the same applies to the outsized “diplomatic” presence in Nicaragua held by the Iranians right now.
If one insists on denying that the Iranians are not intent on using their capabilities to further their campaign of undeclared war, at a time and place of their choosing, then…
Then one day the arrests won’t just be happening in Egypt.
They’ll be happening where you live.
That is, if your police are as fortunate as the Egyptian authorities were this time.
***
End Notes:
All directly relevant End Notes are linked in the text.
General Information on all the Groups, Persons, and Places can be found at Wikipedia. The usual caveat applies to such, however: Check all the sources.
Monday, April 6, 2009
The Weekly N&C for April 6th, 2009
There is no news
Well, there is, but once again this author feels constrained by his self-imposed rule to not use this space for pointless rantings (pointed rants are acceptable, of course).
For just one example of why the limiter has kicked in, John Bolton has a very fine Op-Ed piece on how America's Allies should now consider themselves on their own.
I no longer consider it a contingency to have to advise officials in the government here to have a plan to go on alone; I consider it a necessity to prepare for such.
So let us restate the above premise more nearly correctly:
There is news; There is no comment.
***
This thread topic is subject to revision and addenda.
***
Addenda1: With the U.S. Defense Budget as proposed by SecDef Gates, it looks like American capabilities are about to shrink to match the political mood mentioned above. Enough for the war being fought, and not very much to prepare for the next war.
Well, there is, but once again this author feels constrained by his self-imposed rule to not use this space for pointless rantings (pointed rants are acceptable, of course).
For just one example of why the limiter has kicked in, John Bolton has a very fine Op-Ed piece on how America's Allies should now consider themselves on their own.
I no longer consider it a contingency to have to advise officials in the government here to have a plan to go on alone; I consider it a necessity to prepare for such.
So let us restate the above premise more nearly correctly:
There is news; There is no comment.
***
This thread topic is subject to revision and addenda.
***
Addenda1: With the U.S. Defense Budget as proposed by SecDef Gates, it looks like American capabilities are about to shrink to match the political mood mentioned above. Enough for the war being fought, and not very much to prepare for the next war.
Monday, March 30, 2009
The Weekly N&C for March 30th, 2009
How it is going to go down
On the odd chance that one has been hiding in a cave in the mountains or shipwrecked on an isolate atoll, here is the news item that has been run out on a daily basis for the last couple of weeks: North Korea (the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea; PDRK) is going to launch one or more missiles in a supposed “satellite” launch. (link is to the latest version of the story as of Monday morning, North American time zones).
From the same report, here is a gallery of photographs, with the first few showing the launch site and the main missile in question being assembled. The launch facility is at Musudan-ri, not very far inland from the northern end of East Korea Bay, and previous test launches have been to the east over the Sea of Japan and in one case, onward.
Now, setting aside the blatant fact that if the North Koreans are planning a simultaneous launch of a shorter range missile that rather calls into question the peaceful nature of the supposed “satellite” launch using what is being named a Unha-2 booster… more on that later… the entire process looks to be a simple violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1718 (and related following material bans). Here is UNSCR 1718 in full, for your review. Items 2, 5, and 7 bear directly on this case.
So that sets the stage fairly clearly: any launch of a missile applicable to ballistic missile technology in any way is a material breach of UNSCR 1718. So, just as U.N. member nations are obliged to interrupt and intercept any attempt at proliferating military technology by North Korea, the legal groundwork is clear for action against any ballistic missile technology test… once said test leaves North Korean territory. It would be problematic for an intervention to occur within North Korean sovereignty, in that lacking specific UNSC authorization (which is not going to happen; Cf. the People’s Republic of China) and requiring a disavowal of the Korean War Armistice (which is also very unlikely to happen), no one wants to restart open hostilities on the Korean peninsula. Regarding that last item, to be sure, no one wants to restart the war but both sides are at about the highest level of readiness possible right now. North Korea is just concluding their Winter Training Cycle for their military, and South Korea (and the Americans there) has also just gone through readiness exercises and is always on high alert in this season even in quiet years.
That leaves us with a pretty obvious scenario, up to a point. The North Koreans will complete their preparations and, sometime between April 4th and 8th, try to put up one or more ballistic missiles out over the Sea of Japan. The rest of the world will be sitting just outside the territorial limit, watching and deciding what to do. That watching will be done with very, very competent “eyes” however, and backed up with a capability that is just now coming into its own.
Prelude to the event:
Let us first dispense with the notion that the Unha-2 booster is anything innocent. What it is, based on intelligence and an observation of the failed launch in the July 5th, 2006, mass launch test, is just a renaming (or very slight modification) of the Taepodong-2 ballistic missile. This weapon, if it ever works, is the North Korean “dream weapon” that would provide them with the capability to deliver a 500kg+ warhead to American soil. With only slight modification, this could look like a satellite launcher to deliver roughly a tenth of that payload on-orbit. That possibility is what the Iranian government used to paint a veneer of respectability over their test of the Shahab-3 missile system (under the name Safir-2) on February 2nd, 2009, which placed a 27 kg Omid satellite into what is likely a very short-lived orbit. But the Iranians are not under as binding a ban as the North Koreans are, and they could launch their missile out over indisputably International Waters.
The North Koreans are playing the role of the innocent in all this, to no one’s surprise, and have announced the launch window and downrange debris fields all according to the general practice. If the main missile performs as expected, the first stage will burn out in about 100 seconds and fall away to an expected splash in the Sea of Japan, roughly 100 nm off the west coast of Akita Prefecture, Japan. The second stage would then burn for again roughly 100~120 seconds and fall away after staging into the North Pacific Ocean somewhere in a fairly wide area over 200 nm east of Iwate Prefecture, Japan. The upper stage would then, in a real satellite launch, attempt to burn for another roughly 100 seconds to put the package on Low Earth Orbit, with the third stage burning up after it falls away. How very thoughtful of them to announce the risk zones… on each side of Japan.
In the event of a launch:
So they assemble the missile, fuel it up, and on launch day light the candle…
The Americans know within seconds of the launch. Any reasonable judgment of American surveillance technology says they have a ballistic missile warning satellite parked over North Korea, and there is no doubt that the ignition flash would be spotted (rain or shine). Electronic intelligence aircraft will also likely be orbiting just outside the reach of the North Koreans, looking in.
Presume for now that the missile does not do its Project Vanguard impersonation and go *boom* while still inside the gantry height.
Seconds later, as the missile climbs under full load and thrust on its first stage, it clears the horizon and the sea-based sensors of several nations will pick up this big fat bird. The Republic of Korea, Japan, and the United States will all have AEGIS-equipped destroyers in the Sea of Japan to track the launch.
Presume for now that the missile makes it past the ~40 second mark of the flight without going *boom* like the 2006 launch attempt did.
The decision, at that point, is based on what capability and civilian authority has been put in place. The South Koreans (ROK) have little they can do but watch and learn. The United States Navy will have two more ballistic-missile-defense-capable (AEGIS BMD-capable) destroyers at sea to the east, armed with the superbly capable Standard SM-3 interceptor missile. They also have the best practice with the system and will have what is arguably the BMD equivalent of a sitting duck in their sights with the launch warning having gone directly to the ships, a confirmed track from the destroyer in close observation, and a still-unstaged-full-of-liquid-fuel missile in early boost phase to lock on to. But that is where the civilian authority part comes in: according to reports, U.S. Secretary of State H. Clinton has stated that no attempt to shoot down the missile will be made; U.S. Secretary of Defense R. Gates has publicly distained the need to shoot down the missile “unless an errant missile was to threaten Hawaii”.
Presume for now the North Koreans are not conducting a joint missile and warhead test that would “errantly” be headed straight for American soil, and that the Americans are competent enough to make that judgment in a timely enough manner to, if deemed necessary, use either the AEGIS BMD ships or the Ground-based Midcourse Defense interceptors at Ft. Greely, Alaska.
What that all means is that the Americans are likely going to be spectators.
However…
The nation of Japan is right under the flight path, and could reasonably argue an airspace violation since the missile would still be under second-stage boost as its territory was over-flown. Japan will be directly between the splash zones of the first and second stage boosters which might not fall in the declared zones and, in the case of a staging failure…
…the missile may well fall (from the example, in pieces) upon Japanese territory.
Here is what Japan brings to the table:
One AEGIS destroyer placed in close observation range of the launch. No SM-3 capability on that ship, but its job is to see, not shoot.
Two AEGIS BMD-capable destroyers placed to the east, both carrying SM-3 interceptors.
Japan has participated in two full-scale BMD exercises with the Americans at their Hawaiian test range, going 1 for 2 on intercepts but having learned almost as much from the miss as from the hit. Lesson one learned: Salvo launch. Put up multiple interceptors. There is no need for economy in a must-hit scenario.
Terminal Defense: Japan has spent a lot of time and money of getting good with the new (to Japan) PAC-3 variant Patriot Air Defense Missile System. The PAC-3 is a greatly altered Patriot surface-to-air missile optimized for terminal interception of ballistic missiles. This is not your Gulf War SCUD-buster; Used against a non-maneuverable warhead or missile assembly entering the system’s ~20 mile (~30 km) defensible radius, this system is a lead-pipe cinch to score a hit-to-kill physical interception. The fragments of both the target and the interceptor then rain down short of the intended target. The design is that the fragments are in such small pieces as to be of little threat. As of today, Japan has deployed several units equipped with the PAC-3 system to be positioned to protect major population centers in Akita and Iwate Prefectures. Here is the latest report from the Yomiuri Newspaper (in Japanese), which includes a picture of one of the PAC-3 vehicles arriving at Komachi Stadium in Akita City. The report also cites a deployment in-place in Iwate Prefecture.
Civilian Authority: The government of Japan has issued an authorization order prior to any possible launch that approves of immediate action by the Self-Defense Forces to destroy “any missile or debris that might endanger Japanese territory” originating from this event. No doubt about it.
So there you have it.
Any launch would be a UNSCR 1718 violation.
If a launch occurs and there is any reasonable chance that Japanese territory would be endangered, the political decision has been made by civilian leaders for Japan to defend itself and its sovereignty.
It is time to stop playing the North Korean Blackmail Game.
It is time to stop tolerating legalese obfuscations and diplomatic incompetence on the part of North Korea’s apologists, too.
Somebody hold our Foster Grants; We have got some work to do, and if you are not going to do it, well then don't get in the way.
***
End Notes:
All End Notes are embedded in the text as links.
The following are for General Information only. As always with Wiki-p, source everything.
General Information on Musudan-ri, the major North Korean missile test center
General Information (limited) on the supposed Unha-2 SLV
General Information on the Taepodong-2; what they are likely really testing
General Information on the Nodong-2; the biggest ballistic missile in anything like reliable use in the DPRK military
General Information on Iran’s Safir SLV and the Omid satellite
General Information on the AEGIS BMD system, with links from there to the SM-3 interceptor
General Information on the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense System
General Information on the Patriot Air Defense System, including the PAC-3
On the odd chance that one has been hiding in a cave in the mountains or shipwrecked on an isolate atoll, here is the news item that has been run out on a daily basis for the last couple of weeks: North Korea (the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea; PDRK) is going to launch one or more missiles in a supposed “satellite” launch. (link is to the latest version of the story as of Monday morning, North American time zones).
From the same report, here is a gallery of photographs, with the first few showing the launch site and the main missile in question being assembled. The launch facility is at Musudan-ri, not very far inland from the northern end of East Korea Bay, and previous test launches have been to the east over the Sea of Japan and in one case, onward.
Now, setting aside the blatant fact that if the North Koreans are planning a simultaneous launch of a shorter range missile that rather calls into question the peaceful nature of the supposed “satellite” launch using what is being named a Unha-2 booster… more on that later… the entire process looks to be a simple violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1718 (and related following material bans). Here is UNSCR 1718 in full, for your review. Items 2, 5, and 7 bear directly on this case.
So that sets the stage fairly clearly: any launch of a missile applicable to ballistic missile technology in any way is a material breach of UNSCR 1718. So, just as U.N. member nations are obliged to interrupt and intercept any attempt at proliferating military technology by North Korea, the legal groundwork is clear for action against any ballistic missile technology test… once said test leaves North Korean territory. It would be problematic for an intervention to occur within North Korean sovereignty, in that lacking specific UNSC authorization (which is not going to happen; Cf. the People’s Republic of China) and requiring a disavowal of the Korean War Armistice (which is also very unlikely to happen), no one wants to restart open hostilities on the Korean peninsula. Regarding that last item, to be sure, no one wants to restart the war but both sides are at about the highest level of readiness possible right now. North Korea is just concluding their Winter Training Cycle for their military, and South Korea (and the Americans there) has also just gone through readiness exercises and is always on high alert in this season even in quiet years.
That leaves us with a pretty obvious scenario, up to a point. The North Koreans will complete their preparations and, sometime between April 4th and 8th, try to put up one or more ballistic missiles out over the Sea of Japan. The rest of the world will be sitting just outside the territorial limit, watching and deciding what to do. That watching will be done with very, very competent “eyes” however, and backed up with a capability that is just now coming into its own.
Prelude to the event:
Let us first dispense with the notion that the Unha-2 booster is anything innocent. What it is, based on intelligence and an observation of the failed launch in the July 5th, 2006, mass launch test, is just a renaming (or very slight modification) of the Taepodong-2 ballistic missile. This weapon, if it ever works, is the North Korean “dream weapon” that would provide them with the capability to deliver a 500kg+ warhead to American soil. With only slight modification, this could look like a satellite launcher to deliver roughly a tenth of that payload on-orbit. That possibility is what the Iranian government used to paint a veneer of respectability over their test of the Shahab-3 missile system (under the name Safir-2) on February 2nd, 2009, which placed a 27 kg Omid satellite into what is likely a very short-lived orbit. But the Iranians are not under as binding a ban as the North Koreans are, and they could launch their missile out over indisputably International Waters.
The North Koreans are playing the role of the innocent in all this, to no one’s surprise, and have announced the launch window and downrange debris fields all according to the general practice. If the main missile performs as expected, the first stage will burn out in about 100 seconds and fall away to an expected splash in the Sea of Japan, roughly 100 nm off the west coast of Akita Prefecture, Japan. The second stage would then burn for again roughly 100~120 seconds and fall away after staging into the North Pacific Ocean somewhere in a fairly wide area over 200 nm east of Iwate Prefecture, Japan. The upper stage would then, in a real satellite launch, attempt to burn for another roughly 100 seconds to put the package on Low Earth Orbit, with the third stage burning up after it falls away. How very thoughtful of them to announce the risk zones… on each side of Japan.
In the event of a launch:
So they assemble the missile, fuel it up, and on launch day light the candle…
The Americans know within seconds of the launch. Any reasonable judgment of American surveillance technology says they have a ballistic missile warning satellite parked over North Korea, and there is no doubt that the ignition flash would be spotted (rain or shine). Electronic intelligence aircraft will also likely be orbiting just outside the reach of the North Koreans, looking in.
Presume for now that the missile does not do its Project Vanguard impersonation and go *boom* while still inside the gantry height.
Seconds later, as the missile climbs under full load and thrust on its first stage, it clears the horizon and the sea-based sensors of several nations will pick up this big fat bird. The Republic of Korea, Japan, and the United States will all have AEGIS-equipped destroyers in the Sea of Japan to track the launch.
Presume for now that the missile makes it past the ~40 second mark of the flight without going *boom* like the 2006 launch attempt did.
The decision, at that point, is based on what capability and civilian authority has been put in place. The South Koreans (ROK) have little they can do but watch and learn. The United States Navy will have two more ballistic-missile-defense-capable (AEGIS BMD-capable) destroyers at sea to the east, armed with the superbly capable Standard SM-3 interceptor missile. They also have the best practice with the system and will have what is arguably the BMD equivalent of a sitting duck in their sights with the launch warning having gone directly to the ships, a confirmed track from the destroyer in close observation, and a still-unstaged-full-of-liquid-fuel missile in early boost phase to lock on to. But that is where the civilian authority part comes in: according to reports, U.S. Secretary of State H. Clinton has stated that no attempt to shoot down the missile will be made; U.S. Secretary of Defense R. Gates has publicly distained the need to shoot down the missile “unless an errant missile was to threaten Hawaii”.
Presume for now the North Koreans are not conducting a joint missile and warhead test that would “errantly” be headed straight for American soil, and that the Americans are competent enough to make that judgment in a timely enough manner to, if deemed necessary, use either the AEGIS BMD ships or the Ground-based Midcourse Defense interceptors at Ft. Greely, Alaska.
What that all means is that the Americans are likely going to be spectators.
However…
The nation of Japan is right under the flight path, and could reasonably argue an airspace violation since the missile would still be under second-stage boost as its territory was over-flown. Japan will be directly between the splash zones of the first and second stage boosters which might not fall in the declared zones and, in the case of a staging failure…
…the missile may well fall (from the example, in pieces) upon Japanese territory.
Here is what Japan brings to the table:
One AEGIS destroyer placed in close observation range of the launch. No SM-3 capability on that ship, but its job is to see, not shoot.
Two AEGIS BMD-capable destroyers placed to the east, both carrying SM-3 interceptors.
Japan has participated in two full-scale BMD exercises with the Americans at their Hawaiian test range, going 1 for 2 on intercepts but having learned almost as much from the miss as from the hit. Lesson one learned: Salvo launch. Put up multiple interceptors. There is no need for economy in a must-hit scenario.
Terminal Defense: Japan has spent a lot of time and money of getting good with the new (to Japan) PAC-3 variant Patriot Air Defense Missile System. The PAC-3 is a greatly altered Patriot surface-to-air missile optimized for terminal interception of ballistic missiles. This is not your Gulf War SCUD-buster; Used against a non-maneuverable warhead or missile assembly entering the system’s ~20 mile (~30 km) defensible radius, this system is a lead-pipe cinch to score a hit-to-kill physical interception. The fragments of both the target and the interceptor then rain down short of the intended target. The design is that the fragments are in such small pieces as to be of little threat. As of today, Japan has deployed several units equipped with the PAC-3 system to be positioned to protect major population centers in Akita and Iwate Prefectures. Here is the latest report from the Yomiuri Newspaper (in Japanese), which includes a picture of one of the PAC-3 vehicles arriving at Komachi Stadium in Akita City. The report also cites a deployment in-place in Iwate Prefecture.
Civilian Authority: The government of Japan has issued an authorization order prior to any possible launch that approves of immediate action by the Self-Defense Forces to destroy “any missile or debris that might endanger Japanese territory” originating from this event. No doubt about it.
So there you have it.
Any launch would be a UNSCR 1718 violation.
If a launch occurs and there is any reasonable chance that Japanese territory would be endangered, the political decision has been made by civilian leaders for Japan to defend itself and its sovereignty.
It is time to stop playing the North Korean Blackmail Game.
It is time to stop tolerating legalese obfuscations and diplomatic incompetence on the part of North Korea’s apologists, too.
Somebody hold our Foster Grants; We have got some work to do, and if you are not going to do it, well then don't get in the way.
***
End Notes:
All End Notes are embedded in the text as links.
The following are for General Information only. As always with Wiki-p, source everything.
General Information on Musudan-ri, the major North Korean missile test center
General Information (limited) on the supposed Unha-2 SLV
General Information on the Taepodong-2; what they are likely really testing
General Information on the Nodong-2; the biggest ballistic missile in anything like reliable use in the DPRK military
General Information on Iran’s Safir SLV and the Omid satellite
General Information on the AEGIS BMD system, with links from there to the SM-3 interceptor
General Information on the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense System
General Information on the Patriot Air Defense System, including the PAC-3
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