Massacres and Genocide

The Foreign Affairs Committee of the United States House of Representatives has voted to recognise the 1915 massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide. The Turkish government (and, in all likelihood, Turkish people generally) are very annoyed. There are suggestions that this might have terrible repercussions regarding US efforts to pacify Iraq.

People who deny the extermination of Jewish people by the Nazis in the Second World War typically say that there was no targetted programme of mass killing and that the numbers who died are grossly exaggerated and no higher than might be expected in a continent at war. Armenian genocide denial is somewhat similar. In fairness to the Turks, my understanding is that they do not deny that very large numbers of Armenians were killed by agents of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, or that many of these victims may well have been non-combatants. I don't know if they accept the widely accepted estimate of 1,500,000 victims, but I think they agree that the numbers were very large. The Turks also talk, however, about Turkish and people of other ethnicities (e.g. Kurds) killed by Armenian rebels and so on, though I doubt they seriously claim that massacares of Turks and Kurds by Armenians were in the same order of magnitude as killings of Armenians by Kurds and Turks.

My understanding of the Turkish position is that they take exception to the word genocide, with its connotations of systematic and deliberate extermination. They point out that many Armenians in areas of the Ottoman Empire other than Eastern Anatolia (e.g. Istanbul itself) were not exterminated en masse (though they were subject to considerable persecution), suggesting that the regime was not hell-bent on the total elimination of Armenians. Analysis of the history of the first world war does, however, make plain that the Turkish leadership under Enver Pasha were determined to expel all Armenians from Eastern Anatolia, and were not too bothered if very few of the expellees failed to arrive at their expulsion destination if not actively determined to exterminate them all. I don't know if there is documentary evidence to prove a centrally directed campaign of mass murder, but the balance of probability certainly supports the idea that such was the regime's goal.

My own feeling is that genocide has become an overly emotive word, something like terrorism in that it is thrown at whoever you don't like this week. I don't think, however, that the Turkish government is doing itself any favours on this issue; their endless carping on definitions makes them look like a shifty plea bargainers. That said, pressurising Turkey on this point does not obviously seem to serve any purpose other than to strengthen the country's reactionary nutjobs, whose current project is to invade Iraqi Kurdistan.

The BBC has an interesting article on the history of Turkish attitudes to the Armenian mass killings: Turkey's Armenian dilemma

crossposted to Hunting Monsters

Rocket State

This is essential viewing, especially after reading Seamus' post from last October. Hilarious stuff... A great little movie.

IR-IKU SINIFI

Some footage of our fellow international relations students in Turkey. A few of the folks in the class that graduated in 2005 made a video. Here is one of their descriptions:

"In 2005, I and my class were graduating from the university. I made two VCDs as a memory of university days and dealed them to my friends... I won't upload them to YouTube. However, I just wanted to make you watch the intro of the discs, because it is a summary of our university days and everybody in our class, except 2 persons which don't want to be shown in YouTube amd many lecturers of us, can be seen in this video. The music is composed by Melih Kibar and first used in the most famous Turkish comedy movie "Hababam Class"... Our class was called "IR-IKU Class 2000/2005"... IR means "International Relations", IKU means "Istanbul Kultur University"... I hope you'll enjoy this video..."

Class photos

In the distant past (October 2006), when our thesis was a vaguely threatening concept that was lurking somewhere in the future, some of us from the DCU part-time IR class of 2005-07 went for a meal in Da Pino. It has taken nine months for these photos to be born into cyberspace, but at long last I am posting a random selection of Sasha's photos from that night. Some people seemed to have been more camera shy than others. Apologies if anyone doesn't like how their photos came out - I certainly look ridiculous in the one with me in it...

Names are L-R or clockwise. Please feel free to post witty captions as comments...

A full table of students

Declan & Liz

Liz, Eva, Ian, & Kealan

Sasha, Liana, & Eva

Liana, Liz, Sasha, Declan, Lorna, & Paul

Eoin & Tom

Kealan, Ian, Eva, Eoin, Liana, & Tom

Some light reading on political Islam

I'm about halfway through Islam and the Myth of Confrontation: Religion and Politics in the Middle East by Professor Fred Halliday. Halliday is originally from Dublin, and lectures about the Middle East in the London School of Economics. I usually read his column on Open Democracy, which gives a great analysis of events in the region.

Mecca

Political Islam is the use of Islam in the realm of politics. Actors who subscribe to this philosophy are known as Islamists. As well believing that Islam should be the basis of a political system, Islamists use the Muslim faith as a tool of popular mobilisation, and as the means to express political and social ideas in a religious language.

One of the academic questions that often comes up when studying political Islam is that of civilisational values. There are those who believe that we are currently in a situation where there is a 'Clash of Civilisations' between Islam and the West. Halliday is among those who suggest that the rise of political Islam in the Middle East and North Africa is linked to Western policies in the region, rather than some kind of essential Islamic values. He identifies political Islam as being essentially problem-driven in nature. According to this understanding, Islamist actors are responding to perceived social and political problems in the region, rather than some kind of hatred for the West.

Because Islamists are attempting to provide solutions to problems, Halliday believes that "the issue of development... is a useful starting point" (p. 128) in understanding political Islam. Halliday agrees that the region is faced with significant social problems. However, he doesn't have much faith in the potential for the Islamists to come up with effective solutions, making reference to "empty ideas about 'Islamic economics'". I do not fully agree with his dismissal of the credibility of political Islam. It seems to me to be too soon to tell whether the Islamists would provide any real answers if they were able to gain power.

Ayatollah Khomeini

One of the strengths of Halliday's analysis is his emphasis on the variety of political Islam. He demonstrates that it is the specific context of the political situation in different countries that explains the actions of Islamist actors. Therefore, for example, the Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas, can only be understood in the context of the Israeli occupation and the realities of life in Palestine. And the course taken by the Iranian revolution was influenced by the conditions during the Pahlavi dynasty. Thus political Islam should be understood as the result of a particular social and political context, and cannot be explained by reference only to qualities inherent within the Islamic religion.

One of Halliday's main points in the book is that the Middle East does NOT need to be studied using some unique category of explanation. It should be possible to study the region using the same analytical tools you would use to study any other area of the world. Halliday rejects the view that the only categories that can be used to describe Muslim societies are categories that are specific to the region; for example, that categories such as Marxism or Weberian sociology should be rejected in favour of authentic, local, often Islamic concepts.

Halliday can speak some Persian and Arabic and has a direct knowledge of the region. His particular area of expertise is Iran, and he devotes an entire chapter of the book to the Iranian revolution. I'd highly recommend this section to anyone with an interest in Iran. He has also met with Hizbollah's senior political strategist Sheikh Naim Qassem in Beirut.

Madame Lévy – an inquiry

Those of us who took the course in Political Islam will have witnessed an interesting scholarly debate, concerning the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, or more particularly his wife and the nature of her mode of employment. Opinion is divided on whether Ms Arielle Dombasle could be best characterised as an actress or a strip-tease artist. Obviously, these are not exclusive categories, and either role could have elements of the other, but scholars are divided on which of the two should be considered her primary occupation. A number of papers have been issued on the subject.

I have carried out certain investigations of my own in the area. The Internet Movie Database, a well-known resource for information on films and people who appear in them, reports that Ms Dombasle has appeared in several highly regarded films, including Flagrant Désir, Les Fruits de la Passion, and Try This One For Size, as well as television dramas including Lace, Sins, and Miami Vice.

I also consulted the entry for Ms Dombasle in Wikipedia, the internet encyclodaedia. Here she is described as a singer and actress. There is no mention here of her having worked in burlesque, suggesting that any strip-tease activity in which she may have engaged was in the distant past and marginal to her main areas of aesthetic endeavour.

Close attention to source material suggests that reports of Ms Dombasle being employed in strip-tease may simply be the result of an erroneous reading of available documentation. Wikipedia reports that Bernard-Henri Lévy described her as having the looks of "a Crazy Horse dancing girl". Le Crazy Horse de Paris is a famous nude cabaret in Paris. It is easy to see how a careless reading of this source could lead to one thinking that it described Ms Dombasle as being such a dancing girl, rather than looking like one.

It appears therefore that the most correct position is that Ms Dombasle is indeed an actress and singer, and that any suggestion of her being employed in the business of clothes removal is based on a misreading of the documentary evidence.

Or so I thought. Further inquiries have revealed that earlier this year Ms Dombasle took part in a nude performance in Le Crazy Horse, promoting her latest record, C'est si bon. Or so reports this French language news source: Arielle Dombasle invente le récital érotique au Crazy Horse It appears, therefore, to be the case that, although Ms Dombasle is primarily an actress and singer, she is not averse to occasional participation in burlesque stage shows.

The Organisation of African Unity

The attached video from July 1964 was recorded at the second meeting of the Organization of African Unity. This was the precursor of the African Union. It was formed to bring about joint action by independent African governments. In the video, Malcolm X talks about his contribution to the Cairo conference.

As you can see, I have discovered YouTube....

Some troubles along African borders

The Nation of Islam, which once was the religious organisation of charismatic African American leader Malcolm X, has hosted Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir at a conference in Detroit. Bashir identified his government as 'Africans' despite the fact that government agents in Darfur have been involved in a war seen as Arab versus African, with the government firmly on the Arab side. For an alternative Islamic view of the conflict, an American Muslim blogger has published an excellent analysis from the Muslim Alliance of North America (MANA). The government agents, accurately described by the MANA as a "paramilitary proxy", are known as the 'Janjaweed', and they are acting illegally. Many villages have been destroyed, locals have been killed and refugees have gone over the border into Chad.

Sudanese president Bashir rejected the deployment of a UN force in Darfur. The Sudanese government has recently been involved in a civil war in the South, and is guilty of human rights violations in the Nuba mountains region. There is also a significant Islamist movement in northern Sudan. As can be seen from the map, Sudan is another African state with very straight lines as its borders. This is because the borders were created by somebody with a ruler in Europe, as a result of what is known as the Scramble for Africa. Sudan is Africa's largest state, and is bigger than western Europe.

The border with Chad over which so many refugees have moved is just one example of how the international system of states fails to capture the reality on the ground. Many people in the region have cross-border tribal identities. This is the situation in many states - one example of the inadequacy of state boundaries is the breakup of the entity of Yugoslavia. Also, on the border between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the Banyamulenge tribe are the Congolese equivalent of the Rwandan Tutsi tribe, and the Banyarwandans are a Congolese Hutu tribe. These tribes in this Great Lakes region were divided by the creation of the current international borders. Rwanda appears to be tiny on the map in comparison to the massive DRC. Again, the DRC is larger than western Europe, which gives an idea of the scale of these problems.

There is a severe and ongoing humanitarian crisis in this region. According to the US State Department, Rwandan infant mortality rates are very high. This UN report cites the high numbers of people without food, clean water, and adequate sanitation in the eastern Katanga province of the DRC, and the failures of the international community to provide assistance. The lives of these people are marked by a high degree of vulnerability. This can be seen as a crisis of development. The region is also home to a range of wildlife, including many of the great apes. These apes are actually hunted by the hungry population. But as usual, these stories and lives fail to receive much international focus. They're not really tied into the transnational networks and structures of globalisation, I guess you could say...