Category Archives: Terrorism

And then there were three

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Unexpected good news from Serbia: police have picked up Stojan Zupljanin, one of the four remaining war crimes suspects still at large.

Zupljanin is a pretty good catch. He was a medium-big fish: a police administrator in Yugoslav times, he became head of all police in the Serb part of Bosnia. He was deeply involved in the ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Croats, and then a bit later he had administrative authority over the detention camps where hundreds died and thousands more were beaten, starved and tortured. (A copy of the ICTY indictment against him can be found here.) You could maybe call him the Ernst Kaltenbrunner of wartime Bosnia.

There was a € 250,000 Euro award for his arrest; it’s not clear who, if anyone, is collecting this. In fact, the circumstances of his arrest are still murky. He was picked up in Pancevo, a suburb of Belgrade — it’s just across the Danube to the north. Continue reading →

While Europe Napped

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Perhaps not “While Europe Slept”, but can we have a little more attention to what’s going on in Italy? As well as the fascist saluting business, and the is-he-joking-is-he-serious threats of violence, we’re seeing gypsy camps being set on fire by thugs, whose behaviour is being excused by the Northern League on grounds that the government hasn’t gone far enough in kicking them out of the country. The government, for its part, is happily legislating against people on the grounds of citizenship, and has apparently decided to forget about the Treaty of Rome and the ECHR for a while.

What genuinely worries me, though, is this trope of people working-towards-the-leader, going too far, and being tacitly understood as having the right motives. It’s traditionally one of the most effective ways to get people to do something really awful. Similarly, this parallel-police tendency is very dangerous stuff – Misha Glenny reckons the goons are being supplied by the Camorra, which wouldn’t surprise me at all. Hey, and people thought I was crazy when I suggested Berlusconi might not go when he lost the last election…

Fortunately there’s the Spanish deputy prime minister and a Hungarian MEP;

Hungarian liberal MEP and a Roma herself Viktoria Mohacsi visited gypsy camps outside Rome and Naples. According to Italy’s AGI news agency, she said that she had been “frightened and filled with horror” by what she had seen.

She referred to “[the] random night roundups, assault in prisons, gratuitous arrests and a general persecutory climate unworthy of a country which considers itself democratic.”

but this isn’t enough. The European Commission is silent. Does anyone now remember that they applied official sanctions to Austria because of the FPO’s entry in government? Yes, they consisted of marginally reducing the size of the flag on the EC representative office on the Karntner Ring or something, but at least it made the point.

Who participates in peace deals?

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When a long running conflict is finally brought to “closure”, is the deal only an arrangement between elites on each side?  The question is prompted by the Northern Ireland peace process, where great progress in reducing violence and devolving powers has not been matched by more harmonious relations at the community level.  And apparent puzzlement among many as to why Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley can seem to get along so well after being so implacably opposed.  Was it just about personal power all along?  

Likewise, we could look at the Balkans and see a problem that in sense of war has been “solved” and yet wonder whether the people in BiH and Serbia are any more reconciled to the apparent implications of the peace deals for their countries.  But most of all, we could look at Israel-Palestine and see clear evidence of Tony Blair’s famous bicycle metaphor at work (“you have to keep going forward or else you fall over”) — meaning endless photo-ops between Olmert, Abbas, Bush, and the regional heads of state and assurances from Condi Rice that lots of negotiating work is being done behind the scenes.  But is there any evidence that the Arab people are more reconciled to a long-term deal that would almost certainly see no right of return for Palestinians?  Indeed, this is one of the paradoxes of Bush’s push for democracy in the Middle East — he’ll need exactly the power of authoritarian Arab leaders to ensure acceptance of any peace deal that will almost certainly be a bitter pill for their populaces.

Perhaps AFOE readers have good examples were conflict resolution was truly a bottom-up process.  But it’s not easy to think of one.

Eurabia Fans: Not just stupider than you think…

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Stupider than you can imagine. Evidence, the map over at this fine post from Sadly, No!. Read the whole thing, but as well as introducing the best title for a blog post ever, they’ve caught “Gates Of Vienna” pretending that in the future, Europe will be divided into Islamic states (with incredibly silly names), Russian protectorates, and the Russian empire, due to teh demographic menace.

Yes, that’s right – they think Russia doesn’t have a demographics problem. They also think that although Iceland will become an Islamic state, Switzerland and, for some bizarre reason, the Czech Republic will remain “neutral”. And Germany will re-divide, with the old Federal Republic sliding into Islamic rule and the old DDR being a Russian protectorate.

Either that, or they’re using a map that’s still got East Germany on it. It feels a bit like mocking cripples to take the piss out of people who are obviously so ill-equipped to take part in any kind of debate, but, what the hell! Read the whole thing and don’t forget to bring your fisker.

But among the routine partisan knockabout, there’s a gem – this UPI article on demographics, which finally offers Randy McDonald some relief in his role as the NATO-standard debunker. Martin Walker notes the French demographic turn-around, but the especially interesting bit is that he actually has some numbers on the rate at which immigrant groups’ TFRs converge with the norm.

The birthrates of Muslim women in Europe have been falling significantly for some time. In the Netherlands, for example, the TFR among Dutch-born women rose between 1990 and 2005 from 1.6 to 1.7. In the same period for Moroccan-born women in Holland it fell from 4.9 to 2.9, and for Turkish-born women in Holland from 3.2 to 1.9.

In Austria, the TFR of Muslim women fell from 3.1 to 2.3 from 1981 to 2001. In 1970 Turkish-born women in Germany had on average two children more than German-born women. By 1996 the difference had fallen to one child and has now dropped to 0.5. These sharp falls reflect important cultural shifts, which include the impact of universal female education, rising living standards, the effect of local cultural norms and availability of contraception.

There is, as they say, no crisis. However, this doesn’t overturn something else we occasionally point out on AFOE, which is that whatever happens in Europe, the demographic transition is worldwide. Unlike my dear colleague, I personally think this is a damn good thing in the light of energy, environmental, and international security issues. I’d much rather be K-selected than r-selected.

The global trend is down, very sharply down. In all, 80 countries around the world, comprising almost half the Earth’s population, are now experiencing a birthrate that is below replacement….With a few exceptions like Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories, Haiti and Guatemala, the countries still experiencing strong population growth are all in sub-Saharan Africa. Depending on its birthrate, the current 750 million are likely to become between 1.5 billion and 3 billion by the end of this century. And if European, Latin American and Arab birthrates continue to decline, then Islam as well as Christianity will be a predominantly African religion, with some outposts in Europe.

Which raises the question, what kind of Islam will that be? The rise of African Christianity has been a force for conservatism and fundamentalism in the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church; but the rise of African Islam looks likely to be a phenomenon of the city, what the Lounsbury calls the “Pious Middle” class. In this context it’s interesting to note that several African countries already have political parties that have adopted the language of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party; it’s not impossible that this Islamic Christian Democracy might find its niche in African cities.

From Ushant to Scilly is 34 leagues

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For me, the interesting bit in this Jean Quatremer story about the race to be the first EU president is right at the end.

On sait simplement qu’il y a des « négociations secrètes » sur le sujet avec Londres : elles porteraient sur la création d’une force aéronavale commune et la surveillance de l’espace européen par les aviations des États membres.

Secret negotiations with the UK regarding the creation of a common naval aviation? Well, the UK and France are cooperating uneasily on their aircraft carrier programmes; the UK is trying to build two 50,000 tonne carriers, and France would like to build another ship. The partnership goes so far as to use the same design, prepared by Thales (UK)’s naval architects in Bristol; but that’s about as far.

After all, the original Thales/DCN bid to build the British carriers foresaw using their design and splitting the workshare among British and French shipyards. However, BAE Systems successfully lobbied its way back in, even though any conceivable workshare plan would have seen its yards on the Clyde getting quite a lot of business; the result is a horrible compromise under which BAE is joint-prime contractor with Thales (as if the idea wasn’t a contradiction in terms), but has to use the Thales drawings and split the work among the UK shipyards (but no French ones. no, sir).

And the British government has spent a lot of time blowing hot and cold about the project; however, it has recently begun buying stuff for the ships, and the key industrial partner, Babcocks, have completed altering the huge drydock in Rosyth where the ships will be assembled from the superblocks the various yards will deliver. Surprisingly, though, these orders haven’t been coordinated with France in any way – part of the point was saving on things like steel purchases and expensive things like marine engines by pooled buying. So far, we’re up to the following shopping list:

* Eight diesel engines and electricity generators – four for each ship – at a cost of about £18.5 million. The contract for the diesel generators had been awarded to Wartsila Defence SAS, based in Nantes, France, with the engines to be manufactured in Trieste, Italy. The alternators, which transform the diesel’s power into electricity, are to be built at Converteam, in Rugby, Warwickshire.
* A contract worth in excess of £1 million for the detailed design of an integrated navigation and bridge system had been awarded to Northrop Grumman Sperry Marine, with the work to be carried out at New Malden in Surrey.
* A contract for the Flying Control Rooms (Flyco) for the carriers had been awarded to Tex Special projects of Ipswich, Suffolk at a cost of circa £1 million; and
* A contract for visual landing aids to guide fighters and helicopters on to the deck had been awarded to Aeronautical and General Instruments Ltd of Poole, Dorset at a cost of about £7.5 million.
* The supply of over 80,000 tonnes of steel from Corus for manufacture of the two ships to an estimated value of £65 million;
* The supply of Blown Fibre Optic Cable Plant (BFOCP) technology from Brand-Rex Limited for the installation of optical cables for data transfer within the ships at a cost in excess of £3 million;
* Reverse osmosis equipment from Salt Separation Services for production of fresh water onboard the ships at an initial contract value in excess of £1 million; and
* Aviation fuel systems equipment from Fluid Transfer International to allow the fuelling and de-fuelling of embarked aircraft at a contract value of approximately £4 million.

I honestly can’t see why it’s a dealbreaker to do the shipbuilding in the UK when doing the marine engineering in Italy is A-OK; but there you go. However, there are the feelings too; my heart melts at the thought of those alternators from Rugby and mirror sights from Poole. I can’t help it; as a lefty northern techie, I’m a confirmed manufacturing fetishist.

But you’ll notice that the UK does seem to be edging towards actually building the ships, without any noticeable joint procurement with France. So what is it that’s being secretly discussed? I reckon it’s that the French don’t want to go through with the PA-2 (their new carrier), but they are also conscious of the problems that having one aircraft carrier brings you. Whenever the Charles de Gaulle is in dock, her aviators soon cease to be current; so, the Aeronavale sends them for a trip with the Americans in order to maintain carrier qualification (currently, they are practising on the Theodore Roosevelt). I can well imagine the French would rather do this themselves, but anyway would prefer to do it in Europe. Also, a deal with Britain might provide a claim on the British carriers during French downtime; the question has to be, what’s in it for the UK? Are they considering making a contribution?

Meanwhile, Turkey is the latest contributor to Europe’s emerging amphibious fleet, wanting to buy a big LPH/light carrier. That makes 29.

Zeitgeist

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Jason Burke of the Observer reports that the next few days are expected to bring the indictment of people involved in Ergenekon. Ergenekon? Well, if you read AFOE you’ll already know that Ergenekon is a secret extreme-right network of influence within the Turkish elite, suspected of being behind a succession of acts of violence, which came to light after the chance discovery of a stash of weapons. The prosecution alleges that the aim of the organisation was to bring about a military coup through a campaign of assassinations and terrorism intended to destabilise the Erdogan government to the point where the army could plausibly intervene.

Or not. According to one of the suspects’ lawyers:

‘There is not a shred of truth in them,’ he said. ‘This is 100 per cent political. It has all been cooked up by the government and by the imperialist powers, the CIA, Mossad and the Jewish lobby and the European Union to eliminate Turkish nationalism. There is no such thing as Ergenekon.’ His imprisoned client, Kemal Kerincsiz, told The Observer in an interview prior to his arrest he was a ‘patriot fighting the disintegration of the nation’.

The government, the imperialists, the CIA, Mossad, the Jews, and the EU all at once? Wow, it’s like one of our Macedonia threads but with real people. Read the whole thing; perhaps the most worrying suggestion is that the respectable nationalist party wants to invade Syria and share it out with Iraq. Right. But then, who can say what is sane?

Here’s Martin Jacques in the Guardian, regarding Italy. Now I usually have next to no time for Jacques, a character whose usual spiel is to write thousands of words about how Asian supermen are our rightful masters, and this is entirely unconnected with his current sinecure at a university in any given authoritarian state in Asia. But I think he has a point. Specifically:

This was demonstrated by the manner in which the supporters of Gianni Alemanno, the new mayor of Rome, a man steeled [s/b "steeped"?] in the fascist tradition, celebrated his victory in the Campidoglio with fascist salutes and cries of “Duce, Duce!”, just as Mussolini was once acclaimed by his adherents. Or the way in which Berlusconi felt able to declare, in response to the victory, that “we are the new Falange” – the name given to the fascist party in Spain in the 1930s. Or the fact that Umberto Bossi, at the first session of parliament, threatened violence if the centre-left did not acquiesce in its plans for federalism. “I don’t know what the left wants [but] we are ready,” he told reporters. “If they want conflicts, I have 300,000 men always on hand.” Or the fashion in which Gianfranco Fini, during a public walkabout with his followers in support of Alemanno, demanded to see immigrants’ residence permits, while Alemanno threatens to expel 20,000 immigrants from the capital, who he claims have broken the law, and shut illegal Roma encampments; with Bossi is no less vitriolic in his attitude towards immigrants..

Duce. Falange. Boasts of a party army. Recreational police harassment. There is something ugly in here, no? Having been responsible for suggesting that Berlusconi might just refuse to leave office last time round, I think I can claim dibs on this; there is something distinctly disturbing in the air.

You think? Here’s a British Conservative getting his fash on:

“This is like the March on Rome in 1922,” one shadow minister said as Johnson inched towards victory. Johnson will not march into London’s City Hall surrounded by blackshirts in the manner of Benito Mussolini’s supporters when they staged their coup d’état in 1920s Italy. But the lighthearted reference to 1922 gave a taste of the high Tory spirits.

I bet it did. I have a pet theory, which is that the crazier your housing market went after 2001, the weirder your politics did – the US, Australia, Spain, the UK, Italy. Compare the other northern European economies – far less crazy crazy finance, and much less weirdness more generally.

And, as if you needed confirmation of the strange times, Prachanda says it’s a triumph for global communism. Well, it’s a bit like being a Keighley fan; every win feels like the cup final.

Update: You think this isn’t serious? Heads get twisted.

Haradinaj walks

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The Hague has acquitted former Kosovo PM Ramush Haradinaj of various horrible war crimes.

This is not much of a surprise. One, while the case against the KLA leadership generally is pretty strong, the case against Haradinaj personally wasn’t so much. Two, Haradinaj put up an aggressive and very competent defense. And three, various witnesses were assaulted, intimidated, or otherwise convinced to change their stories. Testifying against a popular KLA commander-turned-popular politician: not so easy.

In this context, I should probably give a link to the recent Human Rights Watch report noting that the criminal justice system in Kosovo still sucks. The report mentions intimidation of witnesses as a particular problem. Which is no surprise to anyone who’s spent much time in Kosovo.

That said, I’m not sure they would have been able to nail Haradinaj even if everyone had testified. He’s a very smart, very charming guy; he put up a very good defense; and the standard for conviction is very high. The prosecutors case consisted of a lot of “bad things happened when you were around, you were in charge, you would have to have known” type stuff… ironically, a bit similar to the way they tried to make the case against Milosevic a few years back. If Slobo had lived, he might have walked on most of his counts too.

Anyway. In the usual zero-sum way of Balkan politics, the Serbs are going nuts — all parties united; everyone agrees that this totally proves the Hague is victor’s justice — while the Albanians are dancing in the streets. Longer term… well, Haradinaj will be back in politics now. He was actually a pretty good Prime Minister during his brief term. It’s not clear how much of that was telling the international community what it wanted to hear, and how much was sincere. We may soon find out.

In other Balkan news, the Greeks vetoed Macedonia’s entry into NATO, but Croatia and Albania got in. Probably worth a post, but I have a limited quota for arguments with Greek nationalists (“yes, your country has ethnic minorities… no, really it does…”) and I’ve about used it up.

An unpleasant anecdote from 1999

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Via the invaluable B92 website comes a nasty little story from Albania.

In her book, “The Hunt”, to be published in Italy on April 3, the former Hague Tribunal Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte states that, during investigations into war crimes committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, against Serbs and other non-Albanians, the prosecutor’s office was informed that persons who disappeared during the Kosovo conflict were used in organ smuggling operations.

Yah, that’s right. Organ smuggling.

More below the cut. Continue reading →

France Changes its Nuclear Policy; Not Very Much

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Nicolas Sarkozy was in Cherbourg to name the latest French SSBN, the appropriately named Le Terrible, this week; and he had a few things to say about the circumstances under which she might be called on to fire her M51 SLBMs. The headline grabber, which everyone picked up on, was that France is going to reduce the number of operational nuclear weapons it declares to the world; specifically, the airborne component of the French deterrent is being cut by one-third in terms of warheads.

France, until not long ago, operated a nuclear triad; as well as the first class of submarines, there were also four air force squadrons assigned to the nuclear mission, originally with the Mirage IV-A bomber and then with the Mirage 2000-N, and a force of intermediate-range ballistic missiles based in southern France. These weapons were withdrawn at the end of the cold war; they were always slightly odd with regard to France’s overall policy, as due to their range their only credible target was Russia. Officially, of course, the French nuclear force has always been “tous azimuts” or omni-directional (i.e. could point west, or maybe even north:-)).

The reduction, however, is entirely in keeping with the long-term principles of French nuclear strategy; France, like Israel and the UK (although the UK doesn’t have a published doctrine), has a traditional policy of minimal deterrence. This argues that nuclear weapons are subject to diminishing returns; the consequences of having all your cities nuked once are not noticeably better than twice, three times, or more, so the certainty of retaliation is much more important than its scale. “Superiority” is probably meaningless, and anyway uneconomic if not actively dangerous. This was also the doctrine associated with the US Navy in the 1950s, as opposed to the US Air Force; it was much more important to have a very secure retaliation force than a massive first-strike force, which was certain to be perceived as aggressive and threatening, and by happy accident this policy would involve heavy investment in the Navy’s submarines and carriers.

Despite this, Sarko is trying to frame the change in opposition to Jacques Chirac’s speech in 2006 in which he suggested that deterrence extended beyond a direct nuclear threat to the Republic; his press-cat describes this as a return to the fundamentals of deterrence. Beyond that, he also suggested a “dialogue” on the role of nuclear weapons in European security; well, I suppose he had to say something more, as this is an idea that gets taken out for a stroll every 20-30 years without effect. The speech is here; as far as detail goes, he sticks closely to tradition in refusing to define “vital interests” precisely (so not so much difference from Chirac, then) and stating that the force is targeted on a counter-value policy, i.e. against cities rather than against nuclear weapons systems.

As far as the practicals go, France has some 60 airborne nuclear weapons, of which 50 are ASMP(A) cruise missiles and 10 freefall bombs; this happens to match the number of Mirage 2000N aircraft on line precisely, mirroring the original and highly aggressive concept of operations from the 1960s, which foresaw launching the whole bomber force, if necessary on one-way missions to reach more distant targets. The mathematical geniuses this blog is known for will no doubt spot that this will fall to 40; the French Air Force and Naval Aviation have currently got 120 Rafales on order out of 294 planned, all of which are capable.

The reduction doesn’t go quite as far as the UK’s decision to withdraw all the WE177 nuclear bombs from the RAF in 1998, which accounted for all the UK’s airborne and tactical nuclear weapons. However, it’s worth pointing out that the British and French jointly developed an air-launched missile recently; in British service it’s called a Storm Shadow. Some voices in the UK have suggested acquiring a supply of these with nuclear warheads as a substitute for the Trident missile submarines that would be cheaper and less dependent on the US; the argument is based on experience since 1991 that surface-to-air missile defences are considerably less fearsome than was thought in the 1960s.

However, the UK government has been notably unwilling to engage with the idea. Its recent white paper on the deterrent cited only two alternatives to Trident (or disarmament), one of which was to independently develop an ICBM and find bases inside the UK, and one was to procure very long range nuclear cruise missiles (which would need developing) and base them on large airliner-type planes (the range because these could not go in reach of enemy air defences). This can only realistically be seen as an exercise in closing down the debate.

Finally, on page one:

Il a fallu des decennies d’apprentissage pour maitriser de tels savoir-faire, que certains de nos partenaires ont eu bien du mal a reconstituer apres les avoir negliges…

I wonder who he might possibly mean?