IN JUBA, SUDAN Millions of southern Sudanese head to the polls Sunday to decide whether to secede from the north in a historic vote that is widely expected to create the world's newest nation.
After a long and bloody civil war, and after decades of sectarian and ethnic animosities, the mood in this southern capital was electric.
Banners on street corners urged people to vote for secession. Cars carried southern Sudanese flags and bumper stickers that declared "Separation." People danced and sang at rallies and spontaneous celebrations, shouting their support for independence.
"This vote is about gaining our freedom. It's about gaining our dignity," said Kur Ayuen Kou, 32, who had returned to southern Sudan from Australia. He was one of 4 million people displaced by the conflict. "It's about ending our slavery."
But the week-long referendum, the last stage in a U.S.-backed peace process that ended the war, will take place under a cloud of uncertainty.
Many issues that will determine the relationship between the north and south remain unresolved, key among them citizenship rights, contentious border areas and the sharing of Sudan's massive oil reserves after the referendum, the majority of which lie in the south.
The tensions have triggered fears that conflict could erupt again in the months ahead, destabilizing a region where the United States is fighting the rise of Islamic radicalism.
A day before voting began, six people were killed in clashes between southern Sudan's army and rebel militias in an oil-producing region.
An independent southern Sudan would become one of the world's least developed countries, its population among the poorest and most vulnerable, despite receiving nearly $10 billion in oil revenue since 2005. But the region, which is roughly the size of Texas, has few schools, hospitals and paved roads. Illiteracy and malnutrition remain high.
A peaceful vote, and an outcome accepted without dispute, could lay the groundwork for one of the Obama administration's most significant policy successes in Africa. Activists and aid groups have criticized the administration for not being more engaged on the continent and lacking a cohesive policy, especially for Sudan.
On Saturday, U.S. officials arrived in Juba, the southern region's capital, to support the referendum and offer assurances that the United States is committed to southern Sudan's future.
"President Obama has personally invested in Sudan. . . . He's briefed every day on what happens here," J. Scott Gration, the U.S. special envoy to Sudan, told reporters. "That same commitment will continue after the referendum."
Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), standing next to Gration, added, "The stability of Sudan is important for all us, for a world that is becoming increasingly more complicated, increasingly more volatile, increasingly more extreme in various places."
More than 2 million people died in the 22-year-long civil war, which pitted Arab Islamic rulers in the north against the south's animist and Christian rebels.
Since 2005, when a peace treaty was signed, the south has been semiautonomous, ruled by the former rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement. As a condition of the peace deal, brokered by the George W. Bush administration, the south was guaranteed a vote on independence.
Nearly 3.9 million people have registered to vote, and a turnout of 60 percent is needed for the results to be valid. Tens of thousands of southerners have arrived here from northern Sudan and from around the world to participate, some carrying all their possessions and hoping to resettle in the south.
The killing in southern Sudan, though, hasn't stopped. Last year, at least 900 people died in tribal fighting and 215,000 were displaced, aid groups say. Weapons are widely available, and militias are abundant. Clan rivalries and corruption are rife. And the gulf between light-complexioned Arabs and darker-skinned Africans remains wide.
Only a few months ago, it was unclear whether the referendum would take place as scheduled. Nearly 80 percent of Sudan's oil is in the south, and few believed Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir would ever allow the south to gain independence. Southern leaders and U.S. officials accused Bashir and his ruling National Congress Party of arming militias to destabilize the south in order to delay the vote. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called south Sudan "a ticking time bomb."
Four months ago, the Obama administration stepped up its engagement with Bashir, offering him incentives, including the possibility that the United States would remove Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism if a timely referendum took place.
Bashir, who came to power in a bloodless military coup in 1989, is facing pressure from outside and inside Sudan. The International Criminal Court has indicted him on genocide charges, accusing him of orchestrating ethnic cleansing in the western region of Darfur. Both Washington and the United Nations have imposed economic sanctions on Sudan. Clashes between Bashir's army and rebels in Darfur have intensified in recent months.
But Bashir and other senior officials appear to have accepted that the south's secession is unavoidable, breaking from party hard-liners who want to keep the south at any cost. Last week, Bashir declared he would be "the first to recognize the south" if voters chose to create their own country.
In an interview Saturday, Kerry said he believes the likelihood of conflict, while still a concern, has diminished.
An independent and mostly Christian south Sudan would also allow Bashir to fulfill a long-held vision of enshrining Islamic sharia law in the constitution, making Islam the north's official religion and Arabic its official language.
One core flash point is the oil-producing border region of Abyei. The south claims it as its own, but the north wants part of it. Tribal militias aligned with both sides live in a tense coexistence, tussling over land, water and grazing areas.
"If you don't resolve Abyei and you don't have some kind of a solution for the border, you risk continuing a sort of low-intensity conflict along the border, which could spiral out of control," said Zach Vertin, Sudan analyst for the International Crisis Group think tank.
A separate referendum for Abyei on whether to join the north or the south has been postponed as leaders work on reaching a compromise.
Nationality is also an issue. It is unclear whether dual citizenship will be allowed between the north and south. If not, many analysts fear that northerners living in the south and southerners living in the north could face targeted attacks or be stripped of their citizenship. That could trigger displacements that would add more stress on poor communities already facing shortages of food, water and medicine.
"We have an unfolding humanitarian crisis layered on top of an existing and forsaken one," said Susan Purdin, the southern Sudan director for the International Rescue Committee, an American relief agency. "And then there's the potential for mass displacement, an upsurge in political and ethnic violence and a larger-scale humanitarian emergency."
Despite its vast oil revenue, southern Sudan has less than 40 miles of paved road. An estimated 80 percent of adults cannot read or write. Less than half the population has access to clean water; one in 10 children die before their first birthday. The police force is poorly trained, and the judicial system is weak.
"We face many challenges ahead of us," said Zachariah Peter Champail, 40, a teacher. "Tribal rivalries is the fatal disease that could kill us in the south. I hope, by the mercy of God, we can overcome this. We have to sing together in unity."
W.P
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/08/AR2011010803388.html?wprss=rss_world
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Southern Sudan Feels Freedom Close at Hand
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
JUBA, Sudan — Philip Geng Nyuol started fighting for independence with his hands.
He eventually graduated to a machete, then Molotov cocktails, then a gun.
“I crossed rivers full of crocodiles,” he said. “And slept in camps in Congo. And ate wild fruits in the bush.”
That was nearly 50 years ago — Mr. Nyuol was on the ground floor of southern Sudan’s independence struggle, before the rebels even had proper weapons. The memories come flooding back to him, bright but patchy, like sun streaming through the trees.
On Sunday, after decades of war and more than two million lives lost, southern Sudan will get the moment it has been yearning for, a referendum on independence. All signs point to the people here voting overwhelmingly for secession, and the largest country on the continent will then begin the delicate process of splitting in two.
The United States government has played a pivotal role in bringing this moment to fruition, pushing the northern and southern Sudanese to sign a peace treaty in 2005 that set the referendum in motion. A proud, new African country is about to be born, but it will step onto the world stage with shaky legs. As it stands now, southern Sudan is one of the poorest places on earth.
Most people here scrape by on less than 75 cents a day. More than three-quarters of adults cannot read. Decades of civil war and marginalization have left the economy so crushed that just about everything is imported, down to eggs. According to Oxfam, a teenage girl has a higher chance of dying in childbirth than finishing elementary school.
Tens of thousands have flocked back to take part in the referendum, and some analysts, possibly reinforcing stereotypes of Africa as always teetering on the edge, warn south Sudan could be the next Somalia, awash in violence. Already, aid agencies are ringing the alarm about a lack of food, water, health care and sanitation.
“We have an unfolding humanitarian crisis, layered on top of an existing and forsaken one,” said the International Rescue Committee, an American aid organization that works in Sudan.
But this is a land of shared sacrifice, and that may be a cohesive force that helps hold southern Sudan together. After all the years of guerrilla warfare and hardship, oppression and persecution at the hands of the Arabs who rule Sudan, people here are deeply invested in holding a peaceful referendum and building the world’s newest nation.
“We are underdeveloped, yes, but we will do it,” said Gideon Gatpan Thoar, the information minister of Unity State, near the north-south border.
United Nations officials here say something remarkable has already happened. In 2009, ethnic fighting swept the south, with several thousand people killed in military-grade attacks, fueled by longstanding ethnic rivalries and a sudden, suspicious increase in high-powered weaponry. Many southerners suspected that the government in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, was instigating the violence, just as it had in the past when Khartoum fomented a civil war within a civil war.
But in the past six months, there has been almost no major ethnic violence. One of the last holdouts, a renegade general who had been leading a revolt deep in the bush, recently agreed to a cease-fire. “What we are seeing is a real effort for reconciliation,” said a United Nations official in Juba, who was not authorized to speak to the news media and spoke anonymously. “All eyes are on the referendum. They’re all trying to get along now.”
But the official added, “Everybody knows these issues will come up in the future.”
Many northern Sudanese who work in the south are now fleeing. Stocks of goods are going down; prices are going up. People are still talking about what-ifs and the possibility of war, because even after the referendum, some very thorny issues need to be carefully handled before the south can peacefully break off. (The actual declaration of independence is scheduled for July.).
The south produces around 75 percent of Sudan’s oil, but it is landlocked, so some arrangement will have to be struck for southern oil to keep flowing through the pipeline in the north. The border will also have to be demarcated, including the tinderbox Abyei area, where Arab nomads historically have crossed back and forth. Billions of dollars of debt will have to be shared.
But most southerners are not thinking of technicalities. This is not simply a political moment, a time for a new line on the map or a new seat at the United Nations.
“This is a dream,” Mr. Nyuol said, “a dream we always hoped would come true, even if it took one thousand years.”
All over the streets of Juba, the capital of the south, brightly colored banners flaunt images of a single open hand, the ballot symbol that stands for secession. In towns across the south, loudspeakers blast messages of freedom. And salvation.
“We are going, we are going, we are going to the promised land,” sang a preacher in Yei, about 100 miles southwest of Juba.
The south is filled with people who have paid for this referendum with their own blood. Amputees hobble down the street in Juba with barely a glance up at the new ministries that their lost limbs helped bring to reality.
Veterans are everywhere, reflective of a society in which men, women and children were all mobilized to fight for independence.
Rose Hawa Simon, a copper-skinned woman with a million-dollar smile, never thought she would see this day, or even that she would be alive right now. She was one of the few female tank drivers for the southern rebels, and in March 1997 her tank was hit and she was shot twice fleeing the flaming wreckage. She does not question the sacrifice.
“Our people were suffering, our people were killed,” she said. “I said: ‘Let me join. Let me go.’ I started training on that tank, because my heart was broken.”
Alex Taban is another former bush fighter. His son, Jackson, followed in his footsteps and joined the rebellion. Jackson was killed in 1997 and buried on the battlefield. As the referendum approaches, Mr. Taban said, “The thoughts are there.”
The British colonizers planted a political minefield in the 1920s when they drew a line across the bottom third of Sudan and declared that northern and southern Sudanese should remain separate. Part of the reason was to check the spread of Islam. To this day, the upper part of Sudan is mainly Muslim and controlled by Arabs; the lower third is mostly animist and Christian, linguistically and culturally more in tune with Kenya, Uganda and central Africa..
A group of southern soldiers mutinied in 1955, a year before Sudan was granted independence. The civil war had begun.
By 1958, Mr. Nyuol, who is in his 70s (though he is not sure of his exact age), was organizing protests at his high school.
“Even then, we could tell what was happening,” he said. “They wanted to Islamize us. They were building mosques all over the place. They wanted us to change our names.”
He went to the forest in 1963. He laid ambushes. He firebombed the cars of Arabs. In the 1980s, after working as a high school math teacher, he ran underground cells to send food and matériel into the bush.
He plans to show up at the polls at dawn on Sunday, even though voting will continue for one week to allow people in far-flung areas to cast their ballots. He will vote for the open hand, for secession, he said.
“We have waited for this, we have fought for it,” he said.
And when the voting is over, he will return to his work building an archive of old pictures of his comrades who died in the 1960s.
Josh Kron contributed reporting.
NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/world/africa/09sudan.html?src=twt&twt=nytimes
JUBA, Sudan — Philip Geng Nyuol started fighting for independence with his hands.
He eventually graduated to a machete, then Molotov cocktails, then a gun.
“I crossed rivers full of crocodiles,” he said. “And slept in camps in Congo. And ate wild fruits in the bush.”
That was nearly 50 years ago — Mr. Nyuol was on the ground floor of southern Sudan’s independence struggle, before the rebels even had proper weapons. The memories come flooding back to him, bright but patchy, like sun streaming through the trees.
On Sunday, after decades of war and more than two million lives lost, southern Sudan will get the moment it has been yearning for, a referendum on independence. All signs point to the people here voting overwhelmingly for secession, and the largest country on the continent will then begin the delicate process of splitting in two.
The United States government has played a pivotal role in bringing this moment to fruition, pushing the northern and southern Sudanese to sign a peace treaty in 2005 that set the referendum in motion. A proud, new African country is about to be born, but it will step onto the world stage with shaky legs. As it stands now, southern Sudan is one of the poorest places on earth.
Most people here scrape by on less than 75 cents a day. More than three-quarters of adults cannot read. Decades of civil war and marginalization have left the economy so crushed that just about everything is imported, down to eggs. According to Oxfam, a teenage girl has a higher chance of dying in childbirth than finishing elementary school.
Tens of thousands have flocked back to take part in the referendum, and some analysts, possibly reinforcing stereotypes of Africa as always teetering on the edge, warn south Sudan could be the next Somalia, awash in violence. Already, aid agencies are ringing the alarm about a lack of food, water, health care and sanitation.
“We have an unfolding humanitarian crisis, layered on top of an existing and forsaken one,” said the International Rescue Committee, an American aid organization that works in Sudan.
But this is a land of shared sacrifice, and that may be a cohesive force that helps hold southern Sudan together. After all the years of guerrilla warfare and hardship, oppression and persecution at the hands of the Arabs who rule Sudan, people here are deeply invested in holding a peaceful referendum and building the world’s newest nation.
“We are underdeveloped, yes, but we will do it,” said Gideon Gatpan Thoar, the information minister of Unity State, near the north-south border.
United Nations officials here say something remarkable has already happened. In 2009, ethnic fighting swept the south, with several thousand people killed in military-grade attacks, fueled by longstanding ethnic rivalries and a sudden, suspicious increase in high-powered weaponry. Many southerners suspected that the government in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, was instigating the violence, just as it had in the past when Khartoum fomented a civil war within a civil war.
But in the past six months, there has been almost no major ethnic violence. One of the last holdouts, a renegade general who had been leading a revolt deep in the bush, recently agreed to a cease-fire. “What we are seeing is a real effort for reconciliation,” said a United Nations official in Juba, who was not authorized to speak to the news media and spoke anonymously. “All eyes are on the referendum. They’re all trying to get along now.”
But the official added, “Everybody knows these issues will come up in the future.”
Many northern Sudanese who work in the south are now fleeing. Stocks of goods are going down; prices are going up. People are still talking about what-ifs and the possibility of war, because even after the referendum, some very thorny issues need to be carefully handled before the south can peacefully break off. (The actual declaration of independence is scheduled for July.).
The south produces around 75 percent of Sudan’s oil, but it is landlocked, so some arrangement will have to be struck for southern oil to keep flowing through the pipeline in the north. The border will also have to be demarcated, including the tinderbox Abyei area, where Arab nomads historically have crossed back and forth. Billions of dollars of debt will have to be shared.
But most southerners are not thinking of technicalities. This is not simply a political moment, a time for a new line on the map or a new seat at the United Nations.
“This is a dream,” Mr. Nyuol said, “a dream we always hoped would come true, even if it took one thousand years.”
All over the streets of Juba, the capital of the south, brightly colored banners flaunt images of a single open hand, the ballot symbol that stands for secession. In towns across the south, loudspeakers blast messages of freedom. And salvation.
“We are going, we are going, we are going to the promised land,” sang a preacher in Yei, about 100 miles southwest of Juba.
The south is filled with people who have paid for this referendum with their own blood. Amputees hobble down the street in Juba with barely a glance up at the new ministries that their lost limbs helped bring to reality.
Veterans are everywhere, reflective of a society in which men, women and children were all mobilized to fight for independence.
Rose Hawa Simon, a copper-skinned woman with a million-dollar smile, never thought she would see this day, or even that she would be alive right now. She was one of the few female tank drivers for the southern rebels, and in March 1997 her tank was hit and she was shot twice fleeing the flaming wreckage. She does not question the sacrifice.
“Our people were suffering, our people were killed,” she said. “I said: ‘Let me join. Let me go.’ I started training on that tank, because my heart was broken.”
Alex Taban is another former bush fighter. His son, Jackson, followed in his footsteps and joined the rebellion. Jackson was killed in 1997 and buried on the battlefield. As the referendum approaches, Mr. Taban said, “The thoughts are there.”
The British colonizers planted a political minefield in the 1920s when they drew a line across the bottom third of Sudan and declared that northern and southern Sudanese should remain separate. Part of the reason was to check the spread of Islam. To this day, the upper part of Sudan is mainly Muslim and controlled by Arabs; the lower third is mostly animist and Christian, linguistically and culturally more in tune with Kenya, Uganda and central Africa..
A group of southern soldiers mutinied in 1955, a year before Sudan was granted independence. The civil war had begun.
By 1958, Mr. Nyuol, who is in his 70s (though he is not sure of his exact age), was organizing protests at his high school.
“Even then, we could tell what was happening,” he said. “They wanted to Islamize us. They were building mosques all over the place. They wanted us to change our names.”
He went to the forest in 1963. He laid ambushes. He firebombed the cars of Arabs. In the 1980s, after working as a high school math teacher, he ran underground cells to send food and matériel into the bush.
He plans to show up at the polls at dawn on Sunday, even though voting will continue for one week to allow people in far-flung areas to cast their ballots. He will vote for the open hand, for secession, he said.
“We have waited for this, we have fought for it,” he said.
And when the voting is over, he will return to his work building an archive of old pictures of his comrades who died in the 1960s.
Josh Kron contributed reporting.
NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/world/africa/09sudan.html?src=twt&twt=nytimes
Officials Optimistic About Sudan Vote
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: January 8, 2011
JUBA, Sudan — Sudanese and American officials said that Sudan appeared well prepared for a historic vote on Sunday on southern Sudan’s independence.
J. Scott Gration, President Obama’s special envoy to Sudan, complimented the country’s preparations for an “on-time, peaceful and transparent referendum.”
A few months ago, United States officials voiced concern that Sudan could revert to civil war if the referendum was mishandled.
But on Saturday, Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, who is visiting Sudan to monitor the election, said those risks had been very significantly reduced.
News agency reports said that at least six people were killed Friday and Saturday in fighting between southern Sudan’s army and a rebel militia.
NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/world/africa/09juba.html?src=twt&twt=nytimes
Published: January 8, 2011
JUBA, Sudan — Sudanese and American officials said that Sudan appeared well prepared for a historic vote on Sunday on southern Sudan’s independence.
J. Scott Gration, President Obama’s special envoy to Sudan, complimented the country’s preparations for an “on-time, peaceful and transparent referendum.”
A few months ago, United States officials voiced concern that Sudan could revert to civil war if the referendum was mishandled.
But on Saturday, Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, who is visiting Sudan to monitor the election, said those risks had been very significantly reduced.
News agency reports said that at least six people were killed Friday and Saturday in fighting between southern Sudan’s army and a rebel militia.
NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/world/africa/09juba.html?src=twt&twt=nytimes
Monday, April 5, 2010
The Classics Rock
BY JAKUB GRYGIEL
Is the study of classical history pointless? What useful knowledge will I glean from reading about some dead Roman governor of Britain? How will studying what the Delphic oracle had to say about the Persian advance into Greece help me in my future job at the State Department?
I hear such questions often in my seminar on Thucydides and other classical writers, which I teach at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. My students -- future policymakers, pundits, and managers -- approach the class with a good dose of skepticism about the value (aside from mere amusement) of reading about ancient times. Thucydides's history of the Peloponnesian War -- in particular the Melian Dialogue, a quintessential tale of the small, neutral Melians defending themselves against the strong Athenians -- is relatively common reading among budding wonks. But Tacitus, Herodotus, Julius Caesar, Plutarch? Most students favor the latest tome on the rise of China over the insights of these long-dead writers.
My students' predilections reflect a wider skepticism about the present-day relevance of old texts. For modern academics and policy analysts, ancient authors are guilty of adopting an unscientific approach, relying on anecdotes, and showing a primitive fear of natural events. What good does it do the reader to know that before battle the Romans often consulted a pullarius, a chicken-feeding augur? Such texts say nothing about modern life, critics say, and certainly will not help one get a job at Goldman Sachs or the Pentagon. The ancients were not worried about the movement of the IS and LS curves.
But that's precisely the point. Reading Thucydides's description of the revolution in Corcyra, Tacitus's praise of Agricola, or Julius Caesar's tale of Vercingetorix's uprising is refreshing because these works do not simplify human affairs to logical models. These books are full of contrasts and contradictions, showing above all that not everything can be understood. Human affairs cannot be fully understood through a single lens, whether politics or economics; we are often at the mercy of incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces. Events can sometimes only be appreciated when taken as they are.
With that understanding, let me relate 11 ancient lessons relevant to today's world.
COMMENTS (0) SHARE: Digg Facebook Reddit More...
1. Superstition bests logic. Today's leaders, like those of ancient times, do not think exclusively in terms of gains and losses, balance sheets, costs and benefits, and legal constraints. Rather they are moved by hearsay, superstitions, and dreams. Consider, for instance, the Athenian general Nicias, who spent more time in divination than pondering how to extricate his troops from Sicily. He took a fateful decision to stay at Syracuse because of a nocturnal eclipse of the moon and ended up being executed by the Sicilians.
2. Theology is far more important than economics. People are humans, not cash registers. And humans, even today, tend to hold strong beliefs about the Supreme Being, eternity, and what happens when you drink the waters of the Lethe River. They act here and now on the basis of those beliefs. Many will be led to great sacrifices, incomprehensible to those without an appreciation for the divine, in defense of their faith. Witness the Jews who refused to allow Caligula's statue in the Temple and were spared his full wrath only by his timely and violent demise. Others, notably the early Christians in Rome, were not so lucky, and their bodies littered imperial streets and stadia.
3. Political leaders care about public opinion, but they also care about history and their place in it. They might be willing to trade present public support and admiration -- or even the survival of their city or army -- for a shot at immortality and a place in history books. As a British rebel put it to encourage his men to fight the Roman legions, "Think of those that went before you and of those that shall come after!" Well, they lost, and, in Tacitus's description, an "awful silence reigned everywhere." But he fought not as much for that day as for the past and the future. People engage in politics and war sub specie aeternitatis, with all of its consequences.
4. Money is not the sinews of war. Men are. Wealth is nice, but an enemy's center of gravity is his soul, character, mind, and faith, not his arms or his cities. As Xenophon wrote, "It is not numbers or strength that bring victories in war. No, it is when one side goes against the enemy with the gods' gift of a stronger morale that their adversaries, as a rule, cannot withstand them." On another occasion, the Persians ate on tables of gold and still had a hard time defeating 300 Spartans who ate porridge. Persia's large reservoirs of money and manpower could not bend the Greeks' disdain for the Medes and love of independence. The Greeks never surrendered.
5. Thus, to conquer an enemy, change him. Julius Caesar, when expanding the Roman Empire across Gaul and Britain, knew he needed to sap his new and unwilling constituents' desire to rebel. Calgacus in Caledonia and Vercingetorix in Gaul could be defeated on the battlefield, but the Romans had to assimilate the British and Gauls to rule. Thus, Caesar made the enemies into Romans, providing them with things like schools. Tacitus described the result: "The unsuspecting Britons spoke of such novelties as 'civilization,' when in fact they were only a feature of their enslavement."
6. Fear is powerful, but love can overcome it. Our modern understanding is that fear motivates individuals and states. (Thank you, Thomas Hobbes!) Politics is then the attempt to calibrate fear to achieve stability, deterrence, or whatever other desired outcome. Yet the ancients teach that love of one's brother in arms, family, city, nation, honor, prestige, justice, and god will make one do things deemed impossible or even suicidal. For instance, the Melians' faith in justice and their gods led them to naively believe that Sparta would help them against Athens.
7. States are fragile, no matter how wealthy, strong, or cohesive. The "school of Hellas," Athens, collapsed into a whirlwind of violence when the plague struck its people. The Athenians ceased to fear their gods and respect the law and "coolly ventured on what they had formerly done in a corner," as Thucydides wrote. In fact, even families, the rock of societies, can fall apart. In the "bloody march of the revolution" in Corcyra, as Thucydides put it, fathers killed their sons, and there "was no length to which violence did not go." Polities may break up unexpectedly, and the beastly state of nature is always around the corner.
8. Expect the unexpected; not everything makes sense all the time. A respected, beloved, and experienced general can be, in a key moment, a pusillanimous and superstitious leader whose actions border on the treasonous. The Athenian general Nicias, mentioned earlier, refused to retreat speedily at the end of the siege of Syracuse -- for no clear reason at all. Much cannot be understood. The ability to comprehend is limited. Live with it.
9. For some, war is not a means to an end, but a goal in and of itself. Some fight because they love the glory of the battlefield, the pleading of the defeated, the plunder, the women, the gold, and the social cohesion of the battalion. For some, war is a way of life and peace the beginning of the end. Take, for instance, Julius Caesar, who loved the Germanic soldiers who fought on his side even though their fellow tribes were threatening Roman imperial interests from across the Rhine. They simply enjoyed a good fight. Similarly, Tacitus describes a Roman officer who "exulting less in the prizes that danger wins than in danger for its own sake, ... sacrificed the assured gains of the past to a novel and hazardous gamble." Or, as Achilles put it in The Iliad, "What I really crave is slaughter and blood and the choking groans of men."
10. Technology extends man's power over nature, but nature is powerful too. An earthquake stopped a Spartan invasion of Attica; a plague devastated Athens and upset its political order; and Julius Caesar barely made it back from Britain to Gaul across the British Channel. Nature can redirect history in unexpected and uncontrollable ways.
11. Success is elusive. Sometimes naiveté, arrogance, and dumb luck turn the most powerful into a loser. (Looking for a Ph.D. dissertation topic? "Stupidity as an independent variable in international relations" would be useful and rare.) Accept this as a tragedy of the human condition. You will never engineer the perfect political administration. Often a group of brilliant generals can lead to a disaster, as the Athenians found out in Sicily.
In the end, we will never fully comprehend power, war, or life. The biggest danger for modern leaders and students of politics is that we think we know more than we do and that we can play with political realities as if they were hard sciences. Reading these classical texts is a good antidote to modern arrogance. Politics is an art, after all.
F.P
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/04/02/the_classics_rock?page=0,1
Friday, April 2, 2010
Iran says sanctions will not stop nuclear programme
Matthew Weaver
International sanctions will not stop Iran's nuclear programme, Tehran's most senior nuclear negotiator has said in the face of growing pressure from China and the US over Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Following talks in Beijing with Yang Jiechi, China's foreign minister, Saeed Jalili said China agreed that sanctions were "not effective", Reuters reported.
Earlier this week China had signalled that it would back US calls for a draft UN resolution to impose sanctions against Tehran.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said: "China expresses its serious concern about the Iran nuclear issue situation. China is in close contact with relevant parties and is striving for a proper settlement of the issue through diplomatic means."
The defiant message from Iran's negotiator came as Barack Obama stepped up his efforts to secure Beijing's backing for sanctions with an hour-long phone call to the Chinese president, Hu Jintao. During the call Obama "underscored the importance of working together to ensure that Iran lives up to its international obligations", a White House statement said.
China has a veto on the UN security council and its support would be vital to passing a resolution against Iran. Tehran insists its nuclear programme is only for peaceful power generation.
China traditionally opposes sanctions as it depends on Iran for 11% of its energy needs. But there is speculation that Beijing is willing to drop its opposition in return for US officials not citing China for undervaluing its currency in an annual report due on 15 April, days after Hu's visit.
US officials say a Chinese representative made a commitment in a phone call on Wednesday to discuss the specifics of a potential security council resolution.
The Obama administration is hoping to get a UN resolution on Iran passed by the end of this month.
Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/02/iran-sanctions-nuclear-us-china
Afghan President Rebukes West and U.N.
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
KABUL, Afghanistan — Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, delivered extraordinarily harsh criticism on Thursday of the Western governments fighting in his country, the United Nations, and the British and American news media, accusing them of perpetrating the fraud that denied him an outright victory in last summer’s presidential elections.
Just days after meeting with President Obama, Mr. Karzai, who has increasingly tried to distance himself from his American backers, said the coalition troops risked being seen as invaders rather than saviors of the country.
The speech, later broadcast on local television, seemed a measure of Mr. Karzai’s mood in the wake of Mr. Obama’s visit, in which Mr. Obama rebuked the Afghan president for his failure to reform election rules and crack down on corruption. At points in the speech, Mr. Karzai used inflammatory language about the West.
“There is no doubt that the fraud was very widespread, but this fraud was not committed by Afghans, it was committed by foreigners,” Mr. Karzai said. “This fraud was committed by Galbraith, this fraud was committed by Morillon and this fraud was committed by embassies.” Mr. Karzai was referring to Peter W. Galbraith, the deputy United Nations special representative to Afghanistan at the time of the election and the person who helped reveal the fraud, and Philippe Morillon, the chief election observer for the European Union.
Later in the speech he accused the Western coalition fighting against the Taliban of being on the verge of becoming invaders — a term usually used by insurgents to refer to American, British and other NATO troops fighting in Afghanistan.
“In this situation there is a thin curtain between invasion and cooperation-assistance,” said Mr. Karzai, adding that if the perception spread that Western forces were invaders and the Afghan government their mercenaries, the insurgency “could become a national resistance.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Karzai suffered a political defeat when the lower house of Parliament rejected a revision of the election law that would have allowed him to appoint all the members of the agency that investigates election irregularities. Currently the United Nations appoints three of the five members.
The American Embassy and the United Nations mission in Kabul had no comment on Mr. Karzai’s speech. Both, along with other Western governments, are trying to persuade Mr. Karzai to make election reforms that better safeguard against a repeat of the fraud, since without changes Western countries are unlikely to want to help pay for the parliamentary elections scheduled for September.
Mr. Galbraith, who was dismissed by the United Nations after the disputed election, called Mr. Karzai’s speech “so absurd that I considered it an April Fools’ Day joke.” He also said Mr. Karzai’s speech “underscores how totally unreliable this guy is as an ally.”
Mr. Morillon could not immediately be reached.
Mr. Karzai also sharply criticized The New York Times, the BBC, The Times of London and CNN, all of whom he accused of spreading the accusations of fraud. “They know the election was right, but on a daily basis they are call me a fraudulent president in order to pressure me,” he said.
He further singled out The Times for criticism. “Every day my dignity as a president of this country is being attacked. The New York Times and their papers, though, they know the election was right, but on a daily basis they call me a fraudulent president in order to pressure me and put mental pressure on me,” he said.
At times Mr. Karzai almost seemed to be having a conversation with himself, saying that he needed to let go of his anger over the election, but then was unable to do so. “We have our national interest, and by confronting the foreigners our national interest will be damaged,” he said.
“We should put the reality and the interests of our people before us and go forward towards the future. But we have a knot in our heart; our dignity and bravery has been damaged and stepped on,” he said.
One motive for the angry speech might be an attempt to protect himself politically, since it is probable that he will have to accede to Western demands that he remove the officials on the election commission who were seen as most complicit in the fraud. For months the United States, other Western countries and the United Nations have quietly urged him both to change the leadership of the commission and the system of appointing the commission’s members. Mr. Karzai currently appoints the commission’s chairman, which heightens suspicions about its independence.
“These foreigners came to me several times asking me to bring reform. When I asked what reform means, it means to sack Mr. Ludin and Mr. Najafi,” said Mr. Karzai, referring to Azizullah Ludin, the commission’s chairman, and Daoud Ali Najafi, the head of the commission’s secretariat, who were present at the speech and whom he lionized several times over, lauding their patriotism and courage.
He went on to say that he might be forced to comply with the demand, but he promised that the two men “will go to other major national posts.”
Mr. Karzai appeared about to agree to the West’s demands to change the election process because, he said, if he did not, Western donors would withhold the money Afghanistan needs to hold the parliamentary elections.
“He wants to portray himself as a national figure who stands against the foreigners,” said Ahmed Wali Massoud, a strong supporter of Abdullah Abdullah, the candidate who ran closest to Mr. Karzai in last summer’s election.
Diplomats quietly worried about another problem: that the anger toward the West would be used by antiwar advocates in countries with troops here to bolster their arguments for withdrawal. “People will hear this and say ‘Why are we helping this man?’ ” said a Western diplomat in Kabul.
Abdul Waheed Wafa contributed reporting.
N.Y.T
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/02/world/asia/02afghan.html?th&emc=th
Iran Plays Host to Delegations After Iraq Elections
BAGHDAD — Iran may seem an unlikely place to turn for guidance when it comes to putting together a democratic government, but that is exactly what most of Iraq’s political class did immediately after last month’s parliamentary elections.
The ink was hardly dry on the polling results when three of the four major political alliances rushed delegations off to Tehran. Yet none of them sent anyone to the United States Embassy here, let alone to Washington.
Nor has Washington tried to intervene. Even Ayad Allawi, the secular candidate whose Iraqiya coalition won the most seats — and renounced Iranian support in seeking a parliamentary majority — has heard nothing from the Americans.
“Maybe they don’t like my face, I don’t know,” he joked, then added more seriously, “I think they don’t want to be associated with any visit, so they wouldn’t be seen as siding with one against the other.”
The Iranians, however, have shown no such qualms, publicly urging the Shiite religious parties to bury their differences so they can use their superior numbers to choose the next prime minister. Their openness, and Washington’s reticence, is a measure of the changed political dynamic in Iraq. Even though more than 90,000 American troops remain in Iraq, no one seriously doubts they are leaving, taking a slice of America’s political influence with them.
Before the full results were announced here, President Jalal Talabani, from the Kurdistan Alliance, and Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, from the Shiite-dominated Iraqi National Alliance, flew to Tehran on Saturday, ostensibly to attend celebrations of the Persian New Year, which had actually begun weeks earlier. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who ran a close second to Mr. Allawi, sent a delegation from his State of Law alliance at the same time.
“Iraqiya is the only one who doesn’t flock to Iran,” said Rend al-Rahim, an Iraqiya candidate. “They think Iran is an arbiter and broker in Iraqi politics and that they need Iran to put their house in order.”
Mr. Allawi himself said he had no intention of making that pilgrimage. “I don’t think it’s wise to do so,” he said. “I don’t think it’s in the interest of Iraq, nor in the interest of Iran, to go and discuss the formation of a government.”
When Mr. Allawi, whose party was propelled by millions of Sunni Arab voters, toured neighboring Arab states during the election campaign, his Shiite opponents cried foul, accusing him of encouraging Arab meddling in Iraq’s electoral affairs. Some noted that he spent more time in Saudi Arabia than he did at campaign appearances in Iraq.
Entifadh Qanbar, a senior aide to a leading Shiite politician, Ahmad Chalabi, and a spokesman for the Iraqi National Alliance, said the official visits were simply for celebrations of the Persian New Year, or Nowruz, and were not an attempt to win Iranian backing for Iraqi political groupings.
“It’s very mutual,” he said. “Iran has influence inside Iraq and Iraq has influence inside Iran, we have the Marjiya here for instance.” The Marjiya, Shiite Islam’s highest religious authority, is located in Najaf, Iraq.
“Allawi goes on a tour of Arab countries, and they accuse the Arabs of meddling in Iraqi politics,” said Ms. Rahim of Iraqiya. “When half of the Iraqi politicians rush to Tehran, nobody comments.”
“The border with Iran is a continuous stretch of history and civilization,” Mr. Qanbar said, “while the border with Arab countries is a desert.”
But Iran and Iraq have their differences as well. While Iranians are overwhelmingly Shiite, they are Persians, while Iraq’s Shiites are mostly Arabs, and make up only 60 percent of its population.
The Shiite religious parties dominate two of Iraq’s four biggest electoral alliances. Mr. Maliki’s Dawa Party is the major component of his State of Law alliance, which won 89 seats to Iraqiya’s 92. In the Iraqi National Alliance, the largest grouping belongs to followers of the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who has been living in Iran since 2007. Sadrists account for about 40 of the I.N.A.’s 70 seats in the next Parliament. Most of the rest belong to the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, formerly the largest Shiite party.
In the months leading up to Iraq’s March 7 election, Iranian diplomats were openly pushing for Mr. Maliki to join the I.N.A. But the Sadrists — who blame Mr. Maliki for a military crackdown that destroyed their militia’s power — blocked any agreement that would have made him their candidate for prime minister. So Mr. Maliki decided to start his own alliance.
Together, the two Shiite-dominated alliances would easily have bested Mr. Allawi’s, though they may still have needed support from Kurds or other parties to make a majority — 163 of the 325 seats in Parliament.
Some see that as evidence that Iran’s role in Iraq is weakening, or at least being limited. Brett H. McGurk, who worked in Iraq for the National Security Council during the Bush and early Obama administrations and is now at the Council on Foreign Relations, says Iran will remain influential but not decisively so.
“Iraq, ironically, is the one place in the Middle East where people are pushing back against the Iranians, and succeeding,” Mr. McGurk said. “Maliki broke away at great personal courage, and under tremendous pressure from Tehran. Now, they will try to bring Maliki and the I.N.A. back together. But at best it’s a Humpty Dumpty alliance, fragile and fractious as ever.”
Many analysts say Mr. Allawi can hope to win over enough Shiite and Kurdish supporters from the other blocs only if he gets some support from Iran.
“I don’t have any relations with Iran, basically, which is regrettable,” Mr. Allawi said.
“I don’t think there’s any opportunity for Allawi to win the support of Iran,” said Jabir Habib Jabir, an expert in Iraqi politics at Baghdad’s Mustansiriya University. “It’s been years, he cannot undo it in days.”
Within days, though, there were signs that Mr. Allawi might be trying to do so. Iraq’s deputy prime minister, Rafie al-Issawi, who is with Mr. Allawi’s Iraqiya alliance and in charge of leading his negotiations toward forming a governing coalition, met with Iran’s ambassador Wednesday.
“The formation of the next government is an internal Iraqi issue,” Mr. Issawi said afterward.
The Iranian ambassador, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, was equally circumspect. “Just as we do not accept any interference in our internal affairs, we do not allow ourselves to interfere in the affairs of others,” he said.
Nonetheless, the two officials talked for three hours. And when President Talabani returned from Iran on Wednesday, his first official visit was a private one to Mr. Allawi’s home.
By ROD NORDLAND
N.Y.T
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/02/world/middleeast/02iraq.html?th&emc=th
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)