14th edition, 29 December 2014 – Pike & Hurricane

Back to the Roots

Ruzanna Baldryan — Mon, 29 Dec 2014 20:31:02 +0000

In 2009, during the World Economic Summit in Davos, Switzerland, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan publicly criticised Israeli President Shimon Peres for the Gaza operations in his famous “One minute” speech. His unexpected walk from the stage later during the event as a sign of protest, was the first big act, marking the deterioration not only of Israeli-Turkish ties, but also of Turkey’s loyalty towards the West.

Criticism of Israel and the West reached its peak this year, during his speech at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Erdoğan, this time holding the position of President, accused foreigners of loving oil, the cheap labor force of the Islamic world, and Middle East ern conflicts.

The world, and especially the US, started wondering what was happening to this ninety-year partner of the West, dedicated to the idea of the “Turkish model”, based on democracy, secularism and market economy. Just a few weeks later, high ranking Turkish officials made yet another set of controversial announcements. This time they “revealed” that Muslims discovered the Americas before Columbus and that Muslims were first to discover that the Earth is round.

According to many experts, in the 1920s Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s geopolitical shift towards the West was an attempt to “catch up” and gain the benefits of modernization. The same policy was followed by his successors due to economic dependence on the Marshall plan. Thus, the partnership between the West and Turkey remained tight for the more than eighty years.

Turkish foreign policy started changing drastically after Erdogan’s “Justice and Development Party” (AKP) came to power in 2002. According to Turkish activist and student Duygu, who was among the anti-government protestors in Gezi Park in 2013, during its first years of rule the AKP was a quite tolerant center-right party. The party was open to everyone and even social democrats supported the AKP. The fact that Turkey had always suffered through coups and military rule, along with other factors, soon contributed to a shift in the party.

Turkey acknowledged that its lenghty fifty-year campaign to join the European Union is unlikely to be fruitful. The EU, led by France and Germany, seems apprehensive to accept this large country, with its lower level of economic development and its totally different culture.With accession an unrealistic prospect for the near future, Turkey felt justified in its non-compliance with the Copenhagen criteria. The West’s perceived inactivity in the Kurdish issue was another factor that incited Turkey’s gradual shift towards the East.

The party started to implement a new ideology called Neo-Ottomanism. Its main aim is to combine Islam and democracy, as well as to create a link between Ottoman legacy and the modernist Republican era. According to Duygu, AKP and Erdoğan brought about new laws such as the abolition of a ban on headscarves, attempting to outlaw abortion, and banning the sale of alcohol in shops after 10 pm.

Along with these domestic changes, Turkey started shifting its position on the geopolitical chessboard of the Middle East. It started “rediscovering” its old neighbors and started trying to have “zero problems” with them. This entailed the intensification of economic and cultural relations with the Turkic states of Caucasus, Central Asia and Balkans, along with other Middle East countries that were once part of its empire. The announcements about “discoveries” can hence be understood as an attempt to gain favor among other Muslim countries, however ridiculous they might sound to the rest of the world.

Erdoğan’s authoritarian style of governing, and the new limitations it has imposed on Turkish domestic life were questioned by what started as an environmental movement, but quickly turned into anti-government demonstrations in Gezi Park in 2013. It was the largest wave of protests in recent memory, as hundreds of thousands took to the streets in order to prevent the demolition of the park in service to the commercial needs of the government. Trying to contain international commentary highlighting elite corruption, as well as the mass demonstrations, Erdogan banned access to Twitter and YouTube, which only served to bring even more international attention on the domestic issues of Turkey.

Despite this crackdown, his domestic popularity remains strong, as evidenced by his reelection to the Presidency this year. Moreover, in large part due to his pro-Islamic and pro-Arabic policies, Turkey is among the main powers competing for leadership in the Middle East, along with Iran and Saudi Arabia. Perhaps most telling, the Ak Saray, the “White Palace”, newly constructed presidential residence of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is the world’s biggest palace. The Turkish leader, who is preaching unity, solidarity and alliance in the Islamic world, seems to want to become its leader or, as it is often said in jest, its Sultan.

Nevertheless, Erdogan still faces a number of challenges ahead. His policy of gradual disengagement from the West has the potential to damage the Turkish economy, and therefore is met with resistance from the country’s economic sector. Additionally, Erdoğan’s rival Güllen, a US-based preacher of an Islamic community that has supporters even in the “inner circle” of Erdoğan, is actively undermining him and attempting to build a “parallel” state.

This anti-Western policy shift brings Turkey closer to Russia. Despite their different approaches to the Syrian and Crimean issues, Turkish refusal to comply with Western sanctions against Russia over Ukraine, was the first signal of a thaw in Russian-Turkish relations. The fact that, after the scrap of the South Stream gas pipeline, Russia announced plans to not only expand the Blue Stream pipeline for Turkey but also build another pipeline system, means that sooner or later Turkey will become a major gas hub for Europe.

On December 16, 2014 Erdoğan blamed the EU for keeping his country at the EU doorstep for fifty years, adding that he doesn’t care about their opinion about Turkish policies in Syria or domestic raids against opposition media anymore. His vision for Turkey seems very different from Ataturk’s. It is less secular, caring less about EU accession and more about its power and position in the Middle East. The loss of this secular buffer zone may have many unpredictable outcomes, both in the evolving crisis centering around the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria but also for the future of the Middle East as a whole.

By Ruzanna Baldryan

Image Credit:

Picture 1: World Economic Forum, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Picture 2: Number 10, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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Love Commandos: Fighters for Love

Michael Schätzlein — Mon, 29 Dec 2014 11:20:35 +0000

Despite many efforts to modernise India’s traditional society, the population is still divided along caste and religious lines in large parts of the country. Child marriages have plummeted sharply in recent years, but arranged marriages are still very prevalent. According to a recent study, almost three quarters of the population are in favour of arranged marriages. Many Indians think that an arranged marriage is better for everyone, as it gives the families the opportunity to bond, makes the irrational search for the one true love unnecessary and ensures the support of the parents, who usually have the last say in the choice of a suitable partner. Potential partners have to pass many tests: they are screened for religion, caste, qualifications, complexion – even horoscopes are taken into account. Love, however, is not one of the examined criteria. It simply does not have the same priority as in the West. Love unregulated by marriage is something foolish, something dangerous. Especially in the rural parts of India, entering into a relationship outside of a marriage is a shameful thing to do. A lot of families turn on their children when they find out, demanding that any contact between the lovebirds cease immediately. Some families even resort to violence, in some cases, even to murder. An estimated 1,000-4,000 people are killed each year in India in honour killings, which are committed in retaliation for actions deemed shameful by the family or the social group of the victim.

There are those, however, who do not break under the immense psychological pressure and decide to stand up for their love. But where do they go? Where do they get help? In recent years, a non-governmental organisation has achieved remarkable things in this field: The so-called ‘Love Commandos’.

The organisation which was founded in 2010, is supported by, amongst others, tennis player Björn Borg. These days Love Commandos has more than 600,000 members across India. Its initial founder, Harsh Malhotra, was assaulted himself when he went to meet his future wife’s family. After he escaped he went on to create the Love Commandos. Just like the Gulabi Gang, which we have reported on in an earlier issue, the non-profit fights against the problems in India’s deeply traditional rural societies. The organisation’s motto, “no more honour killings”, reflects the frequency of which honour killings occur, committed in connection with relationships unwanted by the families of the victims.

The organisation, which is funded entirely by donations and voluntary contributions from its helpers, provides counselling to desperate couples and helps those who don’t see any other way to escape the clutches of their relatives. All of the organisation’s activities are coordinated from a small office in New Delhi, with eleven branch offices spread across the country. On average, the Love Commandos receive 300 calls a day and the comment section of their website is full of gripping stories. In many cases, however, there is not much time to ponder over whether or not to elope. Preparations need to be made quickly and in total secrecy. In order to help the unhappy lovers escape, the Love Commandos rely on a network of voluntary helpers committed to the cause. The couples, once rescued from their homes, are then brought to one of the organisation’s 200 shelters that serve as safe houses, where they can stay and eat free of charge and marry in freedom, albeit in seclusion, whilst waiting for an opportunity to start a new life together. The Love Commandos even supply the jewellery and clothes for the wedding ceremony if the couple does not have any.

However, committing to their love and putting themselves in the hands of the Love Commandos also takes a terrible toll on the lovers. For security reasons and for fear for their lives, they are not allowed any contact with their families. Getting in touch with the Love Commandos means leaving everything behind and not everyone can cope with that. Even when everything goes well and the couple can start a new life in new surroundings, it does not mean that their families will stop looking for them. Supporters of the Love Commandos have repeatedly been harassed by the relatives of the people they helped to escape. Some families also press false charges against the newly-weds in order to have them arrested. Then, the Love Commandos need to appeal to courts or use their influence to change the minds of local officials. A sad example of how unforgiving some families can be is the story of Hakim Abdul, who was saved by the Love Commandos along with his wife, only to be murdered brutally after he appeared on a popular Indian talk show to talk about his experiences. This
means that while the couples get to live with each other, the fear of being discovered will always hang over them like an ominous dark cloud.

Today, after only four years of existence, the organisation is well-known across India and has an ever increasing amount of supporters. In total, the Love Commandos claim to have brought 30,000 couples together. The fight against honour killings continues.

By Michael Schätzlein

Picture 1: kunjan detroja, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Picture 2: Patrick, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

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Afghanistan and Private Military Companies: Interview with Tim Foxley

Rodrigo de Souza — Mon, 29 Dec 2014 11:16:54 +0000

Following our last issue on PMCs (Private Military Companies) and Afghanistan, we interviewed Tim Foxley, an Afghanistan political and military analyst, on what he predicted would be the future of this central Asian country and which role PMCs would play after the departure of most foreign troops at the end of 2014.

Pike and Hurricane: What started your interest in this field and how did you end up working as an analyst for the British Government?

Tim Foxley: I joined (actually, I think “drifted into” is a more accurate description) the UK Ministry of Defence in 1987 after graduating with a Bachelor’s Degree in 1986. This was during the time of the Cold War and when the Soviet Army was experiencing its own difficulties with counter insurgency in Afghanistan. After five fruitless and bored years of working in a finance and administration branch I got the chance to transfer over and become a political/military analyst in 1992. My “qualifications” as such were a fairly standard history and politics degree, a thesis on the evolution of trench warfare in the First World War, and an interest in military history more generally. During the 1990s, amongst the areas I looked at were security in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. In the mid/late 1990s I spent some months in Sarajevo and also looked at the Kosovo conflict in 1999.

P&C: Why did you choose to become specialized in Afghanistan?

Tim Foxley: The subject of Afghanistan was more or less chosen for me! Perhaps like many analysts at the time, the events of 9/11 proved difficult to avoid. I was reassigned to a South Asian team in November 2001 and told to get on with looking at the ground conflict and start trying to understand Taliban and militia groups across the country. It was very highly-pressurised hard work, providing political and military analysis – threat assessments, security briefings and longer-term strategic analysis.

If I had a particular “lessons learned” moment from that early period, it was that during a fast moving and unexpected international crisis, far reaching decisions with strategic impact are often made when the decision makers know least about the area in which they will be operating.

P&H: Although it is hard to predict, what are the possible scenarios for the future of Afghanistan after the withdrawal of most foreign troops?

Tim Foxley: Someone once said that making predictions is difficult, particularly about the future. At the risk of parroting what most Western governments tend to say when asked this sort of question, all lot of progress has been made, but a lot of challenges remain. By any analysis, Afghanistan is going to be struggling for years. It is not enough to list out the “statistics of progress” – kilometers of road built, number of girls going to school, size of the Afghan National Army, etc. At the end of this year, almost all the international troops will have departed, baring a residual force of approximately 10,000 (remember this is down from a peak of around 140,000 in 2011) and the Taliban, although bloodied an unlikely to capture Kabul, are undefeated.

Afghanistan can clearly go in several directions after 2014. For me, the most optimistic outcome is a slow and painful improvement over several years in the security situation, leading to development of the political and economic roots that are still only quite small. The array of negative solutions include a gradual deterioration of the security situation, a more rapid collapse of the Afghan army in the face of a resurgent Taliban, the implosion of government in some form of coup, or the fragmentation of the country back into smaller, warlord-dominated fiefdoms.

I am more of a pessimist than an optimist. There are too many things that can go wrong. The new President, Ashraf Ghani, is dynamic, energetic and, as far as I can tell, honest. But he faces a lot of problems and there appear as yet to be no realistic plans for engaging in peace dialogue with the Taliban. The Taliban is certainly more emboldened this year, as ISAF forces pull out, and is engaging in larger scale operations now that they have less fear of US airpower. Two weeks ago, reports were coming out form Afghanistan that the Afghan Army is suffering “unsustainable” casualty rates.

The Master’s thesis I wrote last year as part of the Malmö University Peace and Conflict Studies, suggested that a five to ten year military stalemate was plausible and that perhaps an even greater risk than the military capabilities of the Taliban was the risk of government inertia or failure, and a battle for political control of parts of the armed forces. This might see a return to the brutal civil war of the 1990s.

P&H: What role do you think PMCs (Private Military Companies) will play in this future?

Tim Foxley: Given the diminishing role of US military activity over the last few years and the negative publicity accorded to some of the “classic” PMCs (i.e. Blackwater/Xe/Academi), I do not see an upturn in large-scale PMC activities in Afghanistan for the medium term (the next 2-3 years). Of course, many private security groups will remain – personal protection for individuals and embassy protection for example. The trend might reverse if the Afghan army suffers military reverses and recruitment problems.

P&H: Do you think increasing the use of PMCs will be norm in the future of warfare for post-conflict areas and how legal issues will be handled?

I am not sure about the “norm” but, given the West’s difficulties with complex conflicts and an apparent reluctance to directly put “boots on the ground” for the next few years, PMCs might form a less risky way of engaging. Mercenaries of various sorts will always be a quick, easy solution – albeit expensive – to conflict situations around the world. However, there are many scandals associated with PMCs and the spectacular failures in Iraq still stick in the mind.

But we must be careful these days not to simply equate “PMC” with American multi-million dollar corporations using primarily ex-Special Forces. I think the definitions might begin to blur – with the legal implications likely struggling to keep up – and become more complex. I am starting to wonder if armed local civilian groups might start to encroach into the area previously occupied by PMCs. In Afghanistan, local militia groups (effectively warlords) jumped onto the bandwagon a few years ago, providing “protection” for the movement of supplies along dangerous roads. Often their relationship with local insurgent groups is “complex”, to say the least. I think they would prefer to see themselves as PMCs and present themselves as such. Although in a slightly different context, I would also be interested to understand more about the evolution of the volunteer militia battalions in Eastern Ukraine. A study of their activities, funding, command structure and political/criminal connections might be very interesting.

By Rodrigo de Souza

Image Credit:

Image 1: DVIDSHUB, licensed under CC BY 2.0

Image 2: The U.S. Army, licensed under CC BY 2.0

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Fortress Europe – or the Border of Hypocrisy

Wiebke Arnold — Mon, 29 Dec 2014 11:08:43 +0000

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked one of the greatest moments in history – people were reunited and peace had prevailed. Twenty-five years down the line, we still remember this memorable event because it tells us “if we can do this, we can do anything”.

However, fourteen guests of honour did not take part in the ceremonies for this year’s 25th commemoration. Fourteen white crosses representing the people who died in the attempt to cross the Berlin Wall were stolen by the Centre for Political Beauty – a German group of activists notorious for their controversial acts, such as the EBay auctioning of Angela Merkel in 2009 and an X-factor style audition for Syrian Refugees in 2014. Despite these being highly contentious undertakings, they are trying to make a point. We need to stop and open our eyes to what is happening around us.

In fact, the crosses were taken to the outer edges of Europe, to the borders of the EU, where refugees are being prevented to reach European territory. Similar to the events 25 years ago, people are being separated by force. As recorded by Amnesty International, the borders that are particularly affected by immigration are the land borders between Greece and Turkey, which used to be one of the main entry points for migrants entering the EU before mid-2012. In August 2012, Greece launched an operation to block its border, positioning police officers for border control, as well as setting up a 10.5 km long killing-machine-like fence. This blockade caused an immigration flux in neighbouring Bulgaria, leading to authorities struggling to adequately attend to the needs of refugees. Instead of taking proper measures and appealing to other EU member states, Bulgaria increased their own border security.

The countries that are affected the most by migrants from the MENA region (Middle East, North Africa) are Greece, Bulgaria, as well as Italy, Spain and Malta. Many of these countries are struggling to manage the migrant influx. According to the current immigration framework only one EU member state is responsible for the assessment of an asylum application. Unfortunately, the conditions in Greece and Italy are increasingly bad. This has led to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) enacting that member states should stop sending back asylum seekers to these countries. Southern EU countries have complained that the law does not allow for an equal distribution amongst member states as the majority of asylum seekers arrive on southern shores.

By stealing the white crosses, the Centre for Political Beauty tried to point out the hypocrisy of building borders while celebrating the fall of another. However, the fences are not the end of this. At the south-eastern border in Turkey and Bulgaria, immigrants are even pushed back unlawfully to the country they came from, mainly Syrian and Afghan refugees. According to international law, a country only has to grant asylum once the person is on its territory. However, by keeping migrants from reaching the borders by force, the authorities are taking away one of their basic human rights – free movement. Australia is a country well-known for keeping out refugees, and therefore widely discredited. Although their actions are deemed largely contentious, what the EU is doing is not that different. Trying to keep migrants from coming to Europe, the EU is even creating a buffer zone by supporting the migration control systems in neighbouring countries, such as Libya, Morocco, Turkey and Ukraine.

The problem with immigration, however, is not a lack of solidarity amongst European countries or that there are simply too many refugees for Europe to handle. Quite on the contrary, it is an attitude problem. Europe is afraid. Pope Francis recently appealed to the Europeans, saying Europe was “slowly losing its own soul” by no longer being “open to the transcendent dimension of life”. The notion of peace and unity that was so noticeable after the Berlin Wall came down seems to have faded away over the past years. People feel as though they are losing their national identity in the process of European convergence. But instead of looking for solutions, people are finding scapegoats for their identity crisis – the immigrants. Polls have shown that Europeans generally perceive the condition to be more severe than it actually is. Estimating the number of immigrants to be much higher than in reality can shape the political opinion and lead to misconception of the situation altogether.

So really, the problem lies with the people of Europe, standing in the way of creating more effective laws. Pope Francis so rightly said “we cannot allow the Mediterranean to become a vast cemetery!” The White Crosses stolen from the 25th Berlin Wall commemoration should be a wake-up call. Personal frustrations with the EU should not become another person’s death sentence. It is time to look beyond the borders of Europe for a change of mind.

By Wiebke Arnold

Image credit:

Picture 1: phlippe leroyer, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Picture 2: Irish Defence Forces, licensed under CC BY 2.0

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The Shame of the G-Word

Ulla-Stina Henttonen — Mon, 29 Dec 2014 11:04:51 +0000

This story’s right, this story’s true
I would not tell lies to you
Like the promises they did not keep
And how they fenced us in like sheep.
Said to us come take our hand
Sent us off to mission land.
Taught us to read, to write and pray
Then they took the children away,
Took the children away,
The children away.
Snatched from their mother’s breast
Said this is for the best
Took them away

In 1949, Australia reluctantly signed the UN treaty on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. With the horrors of World War II still freshly in mind, their reluctance had nothing to do with sympathizing with the Holocaust or lacking faith in the importance of Human Rights. Quite the opposite, Australian politicians believed that the mere idea of genocide was in such stark contrast with Australian values of fair play, mateship and equal opportunity, that it was needless to state that it could never happen. Having to sign the treaty was almost humiliating.

When the treaty took effect on January 12^th of 1950, Australian politicians could pat each other on the back. Australia was clearly making headway in shaking off the label of a God-forsaken colony and claiming seats around the tables where decisions were being made. Meanwhile the treaty didn’t change anything about the genocide that had been going on for over forty years and would continue undisturbed well into the 1970s.

Forced removals of children of mixed racial descent, who were then known as half-caste and now as the stolen generations, is one of the most public secrets of the Western community. It is the story of state-level domestic violence, that is explained away with “they really didn’t mean it” and when revealed, labelled as misguided but well-intended. It took almost a century to be admitted and apologised for, and it seems to require more years to be called for what it was – a genocide.

What happened to the stolen generations, and the lack of public outrage around it, was just one more chapter in a series of horror stories known as Australia’s indigenous history. The policies and practises that together made up the stolen generations agenda, differed from state to state and evolved from decade to decade. They didn’t always portray the public understanding of a genocide – a Holocaust-like absolute and violent mass destruction of an ethnic group – but the damage caused by removing children from their primary carers and indigenous communities was excruciating and indisputably wrong.

Children were taken away from their families under the excuse of their welfare, and at times, with no explanation altogether. They were then raised in state institutions or on religious missions, placed as foster children or adopted out to white families. Their connection to the families was disrupted and conditions in which they were placed were often far from perfect. Many of the children were subjected to hard labour at a young age and complaints of sexual abuse were common. They all grew up without their parents, siblings, language, culture, and identity, and carried the baggage of abuse and shattered sense-of-self into their adult lives and generations to come.

At the time, the goal of the policies was clear: the ultimate absorption of the ”half-castes” in the white Australian society, and thus solving what was often referred to as the aboriginal problem. Influenced by social-Darwinist ideas of a racial hierarchy, the indigenous Australians were labelled as genetically inferior, and a two-fold assimilation strategy was implemented. Full blooded aborigines would simply ”die out” in isolation while people with mixed descent would be ”bred out” as they were removed from the Aboriginal culture and communities, and girls would be raised and trained to become wives for lower class white men. This way, the aboriginal background would naturally give way to the superiority of the European civilisation.

The personal traumas caused were, without a doubt, immeasurable, but in the eyes of international law, there is another level to these atrocities and a name for what took place in the indigenous communities. Genocide.

The UN Genocide Convention is straight forward in the way it sets out the definition for genocide and leaves little space for interpretation. It is defined to include a variety of acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, and it specifically mentions forcibly transferring children from one group to another. It is clear that even the most conservative accounts of the Stolen Generations policies perfectly qualify as a genocide under international law.

The issue of the Stolen Generations only broke into the public consciousness in the early 1990’s, with Archie Roach’s Took the children away striking a chord with the Australian public. Finally in 1997, what had started out as an indigenous movement, had gathered political weight and culminated in the publication of the findings by the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, a paper that became known as the Bringing Them Home report.

Since the launch of the report, the demand for an apology became the hot potato of Australian politics, but it took another 11 years before Prime Minister Kevin Rudd publicly addressed those touched by the Stolen Generations policies, apologising for the role of previous governments.
Bringing Them Home called Stolen Generations a genocide, but after that, the heaviest word of the dictionary was soon shoved aside and continues to be widely rejected. Australians’ dread the g-word and the potential it has in tearing apart the national identity that is built on the notion of shared struggles and overcoming hardships. Mainstream politicians have agreed to let the sleeping dingos lie as an attempt to avoid an extension or escalation of national shame and guilt. But just how justified is it to settle with “We can’t change what has happened, let’s look ahead and move on?” Accepting and addressing histories that show no empathy to people’s sufferings, is supposed to be difficult. Genocide is, after all, a gruesome reminder of humanity’s failure to be humane.

The mere existence of the “genocide debate” has already proven that genocide is a powerful word, and using it, faithful to its true meaning, and with all the baggage it brings along, would help put a long overdue end to belittling a national trauma and help to generate a much needed sense of urgency in the reconciliation measures.

By Ulla-Stina Henttonen

Image credit:

Picture 1: butupa, licensed under CC BY 2.0

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