Philippa Kaur

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    Opposing Repressive Regimes in the Middle East Is a Death Sentence

    The ruling by Bahrain’s top judicial body, the court of cassation, on July 13 to uphold the death sentences of Mohammed Ramadhan and Husain Moosa has been decried by human rights organizations, condemned in the UK House of Lords and questioned in the British Parliament. Whether any of that will save the men from execution is debatable.

    The men were convicted and sentenced to death in 2014 for the killing of a policeman. That conviction was overturned when evidence emerged that they had been tortured into giving false confessions. Despite that decision, the death penalty was reinstated and subsequently confirmed by the court of cassation. An official in the public prosecutor’s office defended the court’s latest ruling while denying the accusations of torture, claiming that medical reports showed that the confessions were obtained “in full consciousness and voluntarily, without any physical or verbal coercion.”

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    That confounds the earlier court decision to throw out the convictions, which was based on an investigation undertaken by the Bahraini government’s own Special Investigation Unit that showed the men had been tortured. However, in the contorted reality of the kingdom’s politicized judicial system, the court of cassation decided that the convictions were not based on evidence extracted under torture but rather on other evidence.

    “Close and Important Relationship”

    Amnesty International denounced the latest verdict, saying: “The two men were taken to the Criminal Investigations Department where they were tortured during interrogation. Mohamed Ramadhan refused to sign a ‘confession’, though he was subjected to beating and electrocution. Hussain Ali Moosa said he was coerced to ‘confess’ and incriminate Mohamed Ramadhan after being suspended by the limbs and beaten for several days.”

    Moosa has said that, after his genitalia were repeatedly beaten, he was told that if he signed a confession implicating Ramadhan his sentence would be commuted to life: “They were kicking me on my reproductive organs, and would hit me repeatedly in the same place until I couldn’t speak from the pain. I decided to tell them what they wanted.” His repudiation of the confession was ignored by the courts.

    In UK Parliament, four days prior to the court of cassation ruling, the Conservative MP Sir Peter Bottomley had asked Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab for a statement on whether he would use what he called “the UK’s constructive dialogue” with Bahrain to publicly raise the cases of the men. In reply, the Minister for the Middle East and North Africa James Cleverly spoke of a “close and important relationship” with an “ongoing, open and genuine dialogue” with Bahrain. The minister averred that “this dynamic” enabled the UK to raise human rights concerns, adding “the cases of Mr Moosa and Mr Ramadhan had been, and would continue to be, raised in conversations with officials in Bahrain.”

    Embed from Getty Images

    Earlier this month, it was revealed that another heavily politicized judiciary, this time in Iran, had upheld the death sentences of three young Iranian protesters who had been arrested in November of last year during countrywide protests that saw hundreds killed by security forces. Though moving swiftly to convict the men and sentence them to death, the authorities have done virtually nothing about investigating the killings carried out by the state in suppressing the protests. Amongst media highlighting their case is the Saudi news site Al Arabiya. It noted that a hashtag trending in Iran, “#do not execute,” has had over 2 million tweets. On July 19, Iran halted the executions, according to one of the lawyers for the accused.

    In 2019, Saudi Arabia executed a record 184 people, including six women, many for drug-related offenses. Some were crucified after being beheaded. At least one was a minor. In April, the kingdom announced it would no longer execute juveniles; rather it would sentence them to a maximum of 10 years in a juvenile detention center. It is unclear if the decree will save the life of Ali al-Nimr, who was 17 when arrested and 19 when sentenced to death. His uncle Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent Shia Muslim cleric and critic of the ruling family, was beheaded in 2016.

    State-Sanctioned Arbitrary Killing

    In Egypt, more than 2,000 people have been sentenced to death since Abdel Fattah el-Sisi came to power in 2013, with nearly 200 executed. At least 10 children have been sentenced to hang. In the country’s prison system, there is another kind of death — by deliberate medical neglect, as was the case with the country’s first democratically elected president Mohammed Morsi. He was repeatedly denied medication for his diabetes and collapsed and died in a Cairo court on June 17, 2019.

    On November 8 last year, a panel of UN experts led by Agnes Callamard, the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, concluded that Morsi’s death “after enduring those conditions could amount to a State-sanctioned arbitrary killing”. The case shed light on the horrific conditions in Egypt’s overcrowded and brutal prison system, a situation that has been severely exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

    On July 13, prominent Egyptian journalist Mohamed Monir died from COVID-19. He had been arrested and held in pre-trial detention for criticizing, on the Al Jazeera news network, the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis. The charge against him was broadcasting false news. The 65-year-old suffered from heart disease and diabetes, and was therefore at high risk of contracting the disease. After falling ill Monir was released to hospital a week before he died. An influential critical voice was silenced. Surely that was the intention — death, be it by medical malfeasance or by execution, is a powerful weapon in the hands of authoritarian regimes.

    *[This article was originally published by Arab Digest.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    Under Pressure, Will Trump Wag the Dog?

    As commentators in the US media continue to track and assess the accelerating decline of President Donald Trump’s prospects for reelection, some are wondering whether he will be tempted to organize a spectacular “October surprise” to magically overcome his ever-increasing gap in the polls. His behavior in recent days has appeared increasingly desperate, as demonstrated in this week’s shambolic Fox News interview with Chris Wallace.

    Some have speculated that Trump may now be feeling the need to assert leadership in foreign policy after singularly failing to do so on the real crisis at hand: the national response to the coronavirus pandemic. Alexis Dudden, an expert on Korea and Japan, evokes two hypotheses that concern North Korea: “If it strikes Trump’s fancy in the middle of the night to fly to Pyongyang and meet Kim in an effort to appear presidential, he will. If it strikes Trump’s fancy in the middle of the night to order a militarized attack on a North Korean nuclear facility in an effort to appear presidential, he will.”

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    The Intelligencer sees another scenario, one that is less speculative based on events that are already taking place. In an article with the title, “Could War With Iran Be an October Surprise?” the author, Jonah Shepp, reviews recent events concerning a series of mysterious explosions affecting Iran’s nuclear facilities. There is more than a strong suspicion that Israel is responsible for at least some of the unusual incidents. Shepp highlights the value escalation may have for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been under extreme pressure for more than a year through a series of inconclusive elections and is now desperate to find a way to escape the possible consequences of his trial for corruption.

    Mitch Prothero, writing for Business Insider, suggests a direct connection between Netanyahu’s dilemma and Trump’s quandary in an article with the title, “Israel keeps blowing up military targets in Iran, hoping to force a confrontation before Trump can be voted out in November.” Trump may also be hoping that if Israel takes the lead, he will be justified in following through, with the hope that the nation would fall in line behind a wartime president.

    Both Shepp and Prothero focus on the sense of urgency felt in Israel to profit from what may be the last few months of Trump’s presidency before he becomes a lame duck, as now seems nearly certain. Prothero explains that, for the moment, Israel’s decision has been “to follow the Trump administration’s lead of exerting ‘maximum pressure’ on the Iranians.” Prothero quotes an EU intelligence official: “The attacks appear to be part of a campaign of “maximum pressure, minimal strategy.”

    Here is today’s 3D definition:

    Maximum pressure:

    In 21st-century diplomacy, political sadism directed against civilian populations to persuade them to respect interests and values that may be foreign to their culture 

    Contextual note

    Shepp calls Israel’s attacks “short-of-war actions.” He predicts that an administration led by Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, “would probably not continue Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ approach to Iran and would not be as solicitous of Israel’s covert operations.”

    The EU official quoted above believes that “the Israeli plan here is to provoke an Iranian response that can turn into a military escalation while Trump remains in office.” The Israelis would thus aim at drawing the US deeper into a struggle that includes a very real potential of turning into a war. Trump is likely to play along if he believes it will make him look like a wartime president in the weeks before the November election.

    The situation is risky for numerous reasons. None of the parties would welcome war itself, but the ratcheting up of tensions to the point at which the fear of hostilities becomes palpable might be seen as the last-minute trick that allows both Netanyahu and Trump to hold onto the reins of power that appear to be slipping from their respective hands.    

    Historical note

    Following the disastrous experience of George W. Bush’s never-ending wars in the Middle East in what might be called more than maximum pressure on nations that fail to follow the American game plan, the past two US administrations have tended to turn to economic sanctions as the principal means of “persuading” governments to obey their dictates. Donald Trump has turned the policy into a reflex in his foreign policy. He routinely directs sanctions not only against recalcitrant nations but even against individuals, such as the members of the International Criminal Court who have dared to threaten an investigation of American or Israeli war crimes.

    In an article on Al Jazeera, Eva Nanopoulos reminds readers that it was US President Woodrow Wilson who first launched the idea of economic sanctions. Once the trauma of World War I had passed, Wilson got to work looking for ways of imposing order while avoiding the messiness of war. His promotion of the League of Nations was a crucial element. The key to making the League of Nations work could only be economic sanctions, which Wilson described in this way: “Apply this economic, peaceful, silent, deadly [and] terrible remedy. It does not cost a life outside the nation boycotted but it brings a pressure upon the nation which, in my judgment, no modern nation could resist.”

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    President Wilson invented the logic of maximum pressure that has become the most used and abused tool in the foreign policy toolbox under the Trump administration. “There always was a degree of irony in Wilson’s juxtaposition of peace and death,” Nanopoulos writes. 

    Paradox might be a more appropriate word than irony to describe a policy that is both “peaceful” and “deadly.” There can be no greater moral failure and manifestation of hypocrisy than the deliberate inversion of a widely understood moral concept. Because people spontaneously think of war as a form of organized killing, they can be persuaded to think that so long as a state of war doesn’t exist, economic sanctions, which indirectly but just as surely cause death and suffering, may no longer be considered killing. After all, if there is no smoking gun, no crime has been committed.

    Nanopoulos describes the result: “All served the same cause: to advance imperial ambitions without assuming the risks and responsibilities of war. With the establishment of the League of Nations, multilateral sanctions became part of an international arsenal used to effectively preserve the colonial status quo.”

    It has become customary to invoke the famous “rule of law” that we use to characterize the world order after 1945. The aftermath of World War II saw the creation of the United Nations and a global financial system given a stable structure at Bretton Woods. It didn’t eliminate war, but it kept wars local while developing global trade. Nations and the UN began deploying the threat and the application of economic sanctions. Still, we should not lose from sight the links to European colonialism and emerging American imperialism that Wilson built into the notion of sanctions when he described them as being both peaceful and deadly.

    Maximizing sanctions avoids war. But going to war can still have its merits, mainly in terms of electoral advantage for insecure and contested leaders. Margaret Thatcher demonstrated the principle in the Falkland Islands in 1982. This is traditionally called the tail wagging the dog. Whether it is done through war or simply through Wilson’s and Trump’s maximum deadly pressure, Shakespeare’s Macbeth probably had it right when — allowing for an appropriate adjustment in the spelling — he called it “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

    *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Click here to read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    China Is Flexing Its Muscles in the South China Sea

    As the coronavirus continues to spread across the globe, China is taking advantage of the chaos and the preoccupation of governments with battling the pandemic. Beijing has long been opportunistic, so it is using what it sees as a unique confluence of circumstances to strengthen its strategic, geopolitical and military position. This is being done in a number of ways — using soft and hard power — by delivering personal protective equipment (PPE) throughout the world, increasing its foreign aid, rejiggering the Belt and Road Initiative and reinforcing its militarization of the South China Sea.

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    For years, the Chinese government has argued that its “nine-dash line” of sovereignty over the entire sea is based on centuries of maritime history and that China’s claim is airtight. The Chinese Foreign Ministry has even asserted that ample historical documents and literature demonstrate that China was “the first country to discover, name, develop and exercise continuous and effective jurisdiction over the South China Sea islands.”

    The truth is somewhat different, however. As veteran journalist Bill Hayton notes in the book, “The South China Sea,” the first Chinese official ever to set foot on one of the Spratly Islands was a nationalist naval officer in 1946, the year after Japan’s defeat in World War II and its own loss of control of the sea. He did so from an American ship crewed by Chinese sailors who were trained in Miami.

    Nine-Dash Line

    As for the story of the nine-dash line, it began a decade earlier through a Chinese government naming commission. China was not even the first to name the islands; the naming commission borrowed and translated wholesale from British charts and pilots. It is unclear how the Chinese government transformed all of this into a bill of goods it has sold to the Chinese people, but by now it is a source of national pride, however misplaced it may be.

    Yet the Chinese government and its people have backed themselves into a corner. In 2016, an international tribunal in The Hague ruled that there is no legal basis for China’s claim over the islands. Meanwhile, Beijing has failed to produce evidence of its declaration to back up its version of the facts. Despite this, the Chinese have been drinking the nine-dash line Kool-Aid for so long that national pride will not allow them to admit that what the government is doing in the South China Sea is illegal under international maritime law — the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas. Ironically, China subscribed to the convention on the very day in 1982 when it first became a legal instrument.

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    The Chinese government has not personified the rule of law in this case — or in others related to maritime borders — and wants to be able to cherry-pick which provisions of international treaties it will comply with. That is behavior unbecoming of a rising global power and will make states which are signatories to treaties with China wonder if its signature is worth the paper it is printed on. This cannot be in China’s long-term interest.

    The Chinese government views America’s recent naval exercises in the South China Sea as illegal and merely serving to aggravate tensions between the two countries. Washington has maintained for many years that China has no legal basis upon which to continue to assert its maritime claim over the islands, shoals or reefs of the South China Sea. The nations of Asia, and the rest of the world, agree with the US position. The question is: Will the world’s nations join America in publicly and consistently opposing Beijing’s continued illegal actions in the region?

    Who Will Speak Up?

    That seems unlikely. Given Beijing’s recent propensity to practice wolf diplomacy by swiftly and harshly responding to any criticism of its actions, most Asian countries are likely to remain silent. Australia, Japan and South Korea are possible exceptions to that from a military perspective, but given that they have been content to cede that role to America, not much is likely to change in the near future. Australia is already reeling from a healthy dose of wolf diplomacy, which has negatively impacted its bilateral trade with China.

    Beijing has become accustomed to doing whatever it wants, with little consequence. The US, the countries of Asia and much of the rest of the world remained largely silent when Beijing was expropriating and militarizing the Spratly and Paracel Islands. That was a grave error. Now, most governments see little point in objecting to what is, in essence, a fait accompli. Now, short of going to war, China’s militarization of the South China Sea is a reality the world is simply going to have to live with.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    Political Behavior and Basketball Correctness

    Like an elementary school, the United States has a permanent problem defining and enforcing the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. It has reached a point at which every issue becomes focused not on general interest but on individual behavior, largely because the notion of social behavior appears to have been definitively lost.

    Recent weeks have seen an acceleration of the trends associated with what is often called the “culture wars.” Politics itself has been increasingly reduced to accepting or denouncing someone else’s rules to live, work and breathe by. Ironically, in some cases, breathing itself has become the issue.

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    In a context in which the deprivation of one man’s breath has spawned massive and ongoing protests, the National Basketball Association (NBA), a sports league comprised of a majority of black players, announced that it would allow its players to display on their jerseys a message of solidarity in response to the questions raised by the killing of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis policeman.

    US Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri — a populist Republican in a state that not only has no NBA team but has, in recent years, been rocked by racist violence — audaciously stepped in to deviate the discussion toward themes he considers more legitimate. In the face of recent attacks against the tradition of slavery, Hawley has embraced the sacred cause of defending the memory of the Confederacy and its heroes. He accuses his enemies, the Democrats, of using the pretext of anti-racism to dismantle the police, neuter the military and erase the history of the Confederacy. In his mind, none of those three entities can be suspected of racism, not even the Confederacy, which was just about brave white people defending their traditions.

    Embed from Getty Images

    As a senator, Hawley has no authority over a sports league. But he does have access to public platforms, which he uses to promote his political agenda. He complained that the NBA “is limiting its social messages on jerseys.” Hawley wants the NBA to include in its list of authorized messages his own preferred political mantra, “Free Hong Kong,” which of course has nothing to do with the Floyd drama or with the players’ lives, or, for that matter, the US Senate.

    One of the most respected commentators on the NBA, Adrian Wojnarowski, reacted on Twitter with a simple but deliberately impolite message: “F–k you!” What he meant was: You may be a senator but you have no stake in this; you don’t have the faintest idea of what it is about or what it means to the players, and, moreover, this has nothing to do with China or any other demagogic message you probably want to broadcast to your electoral base.

    That might have been too long for a tweet. The two words he used conveyed the message much more succinctly.

    Alas, for Woj (as the commentator is familiarly known), once Hawley expressed his shock at the crudity of the response, his employer, the sports network ESPN, suspended the seasoned reporter after making this statement on July 13: “This is completely unacceptable behavior and we do not condone it. It is inexcusable for anyone working for ESPN to respond in the way Adrian did to Senator Hawley. We are addressing it directly with Adrian and specifics of those conversations will remain internal.”

    Here is today’s 3D definition:

    Unacceptable behavior:

    The expression of justified emotion toward an impertinent figure of authority by someone employed by an organization professionally dedicated to containing expression within a rigidly controlled framework that must avoid offending its audience

    Contextual Note

    Senator Hawley framed his message in populist terms, complaining that by refusing to mention Hong Kong, the NBA was stifling the players’ freedom of expression out of fear of upsetting the Chinese government and losing the lucrative Chinese market. In his letter to the NBA’s commissioner, Adam Silver, Hawley claimed “that the league’s policy on social injustice messages ‘appears to stop at the edge of your corporate sponsors’ sensibilities.’”

    Hawley remembers that the NBA’s delicate attitude toward China had briefly become a hot-button issue in 2019. It resonated with the populist anti-China sentiment pushed by the Trump administration. But that issue has since been eclipsed by something far more dramatic that directly impinges on the lives of players and their families.

    As a senator and supposedly responsible citizen, Hawley should be aware that the NBA’s intention was not to turn players’ jerseys into a new open social media platform for the expression of random political opinions, but rather as an opportunity to express solidarity on an issue that affects their lives.

    Hawley, the politician, sees it as an occasion to score a political point that has nothing to do with the question of racial justice. It would even have the effect of undermining its importance. Race is not a serious issue for Hawley, certainly not as urgent as protecting the political rights of the Hong Kong Chinese. He seems less concerned by the plight of the Saudis, who are far more oppressed.

    As a response to such twisted reasoning, Woj found the best two words to use in the English language.

    Historical Note

    In a speech on June 11 from the floor of the Senate, Josh Hawley invoked Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address and even called one of the most violent battles of the American Civil War a “shared struggle.” He seems to have retained the idea that when two groups of brave people spent four years massacring each other, they were engaged in an act of sharing.

    In a fundamentally hyperreal way, Hawley has a point. Intolerance and even murderously violent behavior in the US have come to exist as a form of sharing to the extent that everyone willingly and often eagerly participates. His message about the Civil War seems to be that white people disagreed only to end up agreeing in the end, which allowed them to emancipate the slaves for the betterment of the nation.

    This view of history implies that once that was done, the problem ceased to exist. That may be why Hawley feels that what the NBA should be focusing not on saving its season interrupted in March by the COVID-19 pandemic, nor on allowing its players to grapple with their racial identity in US society, but addressing the issue he considers vital for his constituents in Missouri: humiliating the Chinese government, if only to comfort President Donald Trump’s and other Republicans’ chances of being reelected.

    In defending the tradition of the South’s role in the war, Hawley claims that his aim is “not to embrace the cause of the Confederacy, but to embrace the cause of union, our union shared together as Americans.” This is particularly ironic coming from a senator from Missouri, since the status of Missouri played a key role in provoking the Civil War. But, as Hawley notes, once the bloodshed and the sacrifice of more than 600,000 American lives was over, the nation came together.

    As author David Rothkopf notes in an article in Haaretz, Trump “has embraced a defense of the losers in the American Civil War as a central theme of his campaign.” Hawley has stepped up to support both of those causes: defending the memory of slave-holders and reelecting Trump. “Let us work together … to build on the history and the responsibility that we share as Americans,” Hawley said. He never stops insisting that it’s all about “sharing.”

    On July 16, Hawley asked for an investigation of a prosecutor focused on the needs of the black community. St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, an African American, “has sought to reduce incarceration and low-level marijuana cases and has angered the St. Louis police union with her reform efforts.” Most objective observers agree that Gardner’s efforts correspond to the most basic reforms aimed at reducing the patent inequality of a system designed to disproportionately imprison members of the black community. Gardner described Hawley’s demand as “a dog whistle of racist rhetoric and cronyism politics.”

    Some of the new “enlightened” populists on the right, such as the otherwise open-minded and anti-racist Saagar Enjeti, see Hawley as a hero, a defender of a working class that includes oppressed minorities. Adrian Wojnarowski begs to differ. A generation of descendants from former slaves probably feels the same way.

    *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Click here to read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    The Political Implications of the Hagia Sophia Reconversion

    On July 10, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan issued a decree reconverting the Hagia Sophia museum into a mosque, thus realizing a long-cherished dream of conservative currents in Turkish society. Originally built as a cathedral by the Romans, the Hagia Sophia functioned as Istanbul’s main mosque throughout the Ottoman era. Its conversion into a museum in 1934 was one of a series of moves intended to distance Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s new secular republic from the Islamic heritage of the defunct Ottoman Empire — and became a totem of conservative resentment toward the Kemalist regime.

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    The reconversion of Hagia Sophia should, therefore, be considered a significant symbolic achievement for the conservative side and a settling of scores with the early republican period. Erdogan is also seeking political gain by treating this issue as an identity battle between conservatives and secularists.

    A Tactical Move?

    According to a poll conducted in June by MetroPOLL, a majority of the Turkish population regard the Hagia Sophia controversy as an attempt by the government to divert attention from economic problems and reverse its declining support. Only 30% said they felt it was really just about a change of use from a museum to a mosque. This means that even among supporters of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its ultranationalist junior partner, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), significant numbers consider the move to be more tactical than ideological — even if they ultimately agree with the outcome.

    Erdogan’s earlier statements also suggest that this is a tactical move. During campaigning for the local election in 2019, he responded angrily to a crowd that raised the topic of Hagia Sophia, pointing out that the adjacent Sultan Ahmad Mosque (Blue Mosque) is almost always empty during prayer times. He told his audience that he would consider reconverting the Hagia Sophia if they first filled the Sultan Ahmed Mosque. Given that this was consistent with previous remarks and little has changed since the exchange, political expediency now seems to have outweighed religious or ideological considerations. Erdogan expects reconversion to produce three political benefits.

    Erdogan’s Political Expectations

    The first benefit is to energize the more conservative segments of his power base by meeting one of their longstanding symbolic demands, in particular in light of the emergence of two splinter parties from the AKP, with the potential to appeal to this electorate. The prominence of the controversy suggests he has succeeded in this.

    The second benefit would be to distract the public from the country’s serious socioeconomic problems. Where the youth unemployment rate — including those who have given up seeking work — has reached 24.6%, the government would like to talk about anything but the economy. Here, Erdogan has gained relief, but probably not to the extent he hoped.

    Embed from Getty Images

    The third and most important benefit would be to establish yet another identity battle between conservatives and secularists. This is the arena where Erdogan feels most secure, and the Hagia Sophia issue appeared ideally suited for the AKP’s identity wars. Its symbolism is multi-layered.

    First of all, a fight over mosque versus museum slots easily into a religion/modernity binary. It can also be used to create an Islam/Christianity binary as Hagia Sophia was originally built as a church and functioned as such for nine centuries until the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul. Secondly, it awakens historical allusions and underlines the real or perceived dichotomy between the Ottoman Empire and the Republic. Reversing a decision taken by Ataturk also inflames existing debates over the early republican reforms. Finally, the move is also expected to provoke adverse international reactions, thus offering a perfect opportunity for Erdogan to breathe new life into his narrative of Turkey encircled by enemies, with Western powers subverting its sovereignty.

    Domestically, Erdogan would expect the reconversion to provoke uproar among secularist circles and lead the secularist People’s Republican Party (CHP) in particular to condemn the decision and mobilize public opposition. This would create another opportunity for him to stir the “culture wars.”

    In fact, however, the CHP and most of the other opposition parties avoided this ploy and either supported the reconversion or remained neutral. This approach is in line with the new strategy of CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who has been careful to avoid such traps in recent years. While he has received much criticism from his party base — especially the secularist intelligentsia — for his calculated lack of interest in cultural conflicts, Kilicdaroglu seems to have been successful in preventing Erdogan from picking his fights.

    In light of the lack of domestic push-back, the Turkish president will focus on international condemnation to fan the flames of identity conflicts, presenting these reactions as interference in Turkey’s internal affairs — if not outright Islamophobia. Given that certain European countries have their own problems with accommodating Muslim places of worship, European criticisms can easily be framed as hypocritical and anti-Islamic.

    In that sense, Hagia Sophia is the perfect fight for Erdogan: it is symbolic, emotionally charged, politically polarizing and consolidates political camps. And all this is achieved with scant real-life consequences. European policymakers should follow the example set by the opposition parties in Turkey and deny Erdogan the trivial rhetorical fights he clearly seeks.

    *[The German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) advises the German government and Bundestag on all questions related to foreign and security policy. An earlier version of this article was first published on the SWP website.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    What Will Future Generations Say About Us?

    This week, 216 years ago, one founding father killed another in a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey. On that early July morning, the vice president of the United States squared off against the former secretary of the treasury. As virtually everyone in America now knows, thanks to Lin-Manuel Miranda, Alexander Hamilton didn’t survive the shootout with Aaron Burr.

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    At the beginning of this month, Disney released the film version of Miranda’s blockbuster musical, “Hamilton.” So, I could finally see this extraordinary synthesis of history, biography, music and dance. As a musical, it’s riveting. As political commentary, however, it’s surprisingly dated.

    America’s Musical

    “Hamilton” debuted five years ago, in the middle of Barack Obama’s second term as president. Just as Obama was daily reimagining the American presidency, “Hamilton” reimagined the American Revolution and the creation of the United States.

    By casting people of color as the Founding Fathers — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison —  the musical speaks to the universality of that 18th-century struggle and visually links the oppression of Americans at the hands of British colonialism to the oppression of people everywhere. It’s both a projection backward of Obama’s breakthrough and a lyrical version of an Obama speech.

    “Hamilton” is radical in form: the casting, the incorporation of rap. The content, however, is quite mainstream. Aside from a couple of references to slavery and the interests of wealthy bankers, it celebrates the spirit of 1776 in a way that Americans of all political persuasions can embrace.

    And have embraced. On November 18, 2016, only a week after that gut punch of an election, Mike Pence attended a show, which prompted the actor portraying Burr to say at the close, “We, sir — we — are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights. We truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.” It was a message from one rogue vice president to another.

    Embed from Getty Images

    Pence “appeared to enjoy the show and applauded liberally,” NPR reported. And for the next three years, he ignored the remonstration. Pence and Donald Trump, too, portrayed themselves as revolutionary underdogs — rather than the reactionary overlords they really were — who wanted to be in “the room where it happens.” They, too, were not going to throw away their shot.

    Now, in perhaps the supreme designation of mainstream status, Disney has made “Hamilton” available to the masses. How times have changed.

    In 2020, thanks to the coronavirus, live theater seems impossibly risky (why are the performers touching each other? How can the audience sit so close together?). And, with protesters on the street challenging Washington and Jefferson over their slave ownership, the musical suddenly seems behind the times, though not nearly as backward as Aunt Jemima and the soon to be former Washington Redskins.

    As A.O. Scott recently pointed out in The New York Times, “There’s been a bit of a backlash from the left against what’s perceived as an insufficiently critical perspective on slavery (and also on Hamilton’s role in the birth of American capitalism). At the same time, the extent to which Miranda celebrates America’s political traditions has been taken up as a cudgel against the supposed illiberalism of the statue-topplers and their allies.” Miranda himself has acknowledged the criticisms from the left. History doesn’t stand still for anyone, not Jefferson, not Hamilton, not Lin-Manuel Miranda.

    The Great and the Not-So-Great

    What’s remarkable, of course, is the speed with which the political temperament has changed. In a few short months, statues have fallen throughout the United States, and not just those dedicated to the Confederate cause.

    Also torn down or relocated are statues honoring figures associated with the genocide of indigenous people (Christopher Columbus), with slave-owning (Hamilton’s father-in-law, Philip Schuyler) and with racist policing (former Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo). Statues connected to colonialism have fallen in the UK, Belgium and elsewhere. Everything, it seems, is up for debate, even monuments to the heroes of the American Revolution.

    We fully expect books and plays written in the 1950s to seem dated. Ditto those produced in the 1970s or even the 1990s. But 2015? The critiques of American failings — slavery, colonialism, racist policing — are not new. What’s changed is that the powerful have been forced to listen.

    Perhaps “Hamilton,” despite its slighting of slavery and reverence for the Founding Fathers, even played a role in preparing the powerful for this shift. But let’s be real: The destruction of images — literally, iconoclasm — is a lighter lift than the transformation of structures. It’s one thing to take down Confederate statues, but quite another to remove racism’s grip on housing, education and employment. Likewise, it’s more politically palatable to recast a play about the Founding Fathers than to grapple with the ugly truths that accompanied the founding of this nation.

    At a deeper level, the musical and the statues share a common veneration of the great person. History, we are constantly reminded in art and monuments, is the product of founding fathers, great conquerors, kings, presidents and prime ministers. Campaigns are launched to diversify those numbers to include women, people of color, perhaps even an activist or two like Martin Luther King Jr. But the focus remains on the individual, not the countless people who turned the gears of history, planted the fields of history, occupied the streets of history and, ultimately, changed the course of history.

    As “Hamilton” acknowledges, great persons are always a product of their time and place, and they’re always flawed in some way or another. Sometimes, those flaws are of an individual nature, like Alexander Hamilton’s adultery (or, more recently, the sexual harassment charges against Park Won Soon, the progressive activist and former mayor of Seoul who committed suicide last week).

    More often, the famous personages are as blind to their faults as most everyone else in their society. Transforming society requires a collective effort to shine a light on these blind spots, as the Black Lives Matter movement has done, at home and abroad, around police violence, racist iconography and the legacy of colonialism.

    Iconoclasts of the Future, Unite!

    So, perhaps it’s time to conduct a thought experiment. We’ve seen how quickly culture has moved on and left the blind spots of “Hamilton” more readily visible. How will future generations condemn us for our blind spots as they tear down today’s statues tomorrow?

    I can almost hear our children gathering in the street to pull down the statues of the famous as they chant, “Carbon hog!” For will not contribution to the destruction of the planet ultimately be seen in the same light as colonialism, as the plunder and robbery of future generations?

    The emancipation of slaves was a radical act in 18th-century America. The Polish revolutionary Tadeusz Kosciuszko berated Jefferson — his friend — at length to free his slaves, and Jefferson ignored him because, just as Pence shrugged off Burr, he could. Jefferson certainly had mixed feelings about slavery, but he was able to maintain the contradiction in his life of slave ownership and sentiments like “all men are created equal” because popular opinion, as opposed to Kosciuszko’s opinion, allowed him to do so.

    Future generations may feel the same way about our simultaneous recognition of the perils of climate change and our car ownership, air travel and use of air conditioning. Greta Thunberg, our generation’s Kosciuszko, similarly berates world leaders and with as little immediate impact.

    Future generations may also look askance at our nationalism. Why do we believe that we owe debts of obligation to strangers who live within certain borders and not strangers who live outside those borders? How could we countenance the return of desperate migrants and refugees to, in many cases, their certain death?

    And what about all the statues raised to military leaders? It seems rather ridiculous to honor men who oversaw the slaughter of others just because they were on the winning side. Future generations may well look at all the celebrated generals as so many mass murderers.

    Speaking of mass murder, how will future generations feel about the millions of animals that we kill every day for our own consumption? Or even the millions that we own as pets? The list of potential blind spots is long indeed, and there are plenty of motes in my own eye. History is constantly evolving. There is no timeless art; there are no timeless values.

    Everything reflects the moment of its production, from the American Constitution to the latest iteration of “Hamilton.” We are engaged in a long, collective conversation enlivened by a soundtrack of insightful speeches, catchy tunes and the rising roar of street protest. As for those future statues, I dearly hope that they are pulled down, defaced, disgraced. Because that would mean, in a future of superstorms and nuclear threats and periodic pandemics, that at least there are still people around to take them down.

    *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    Albania’s Ancient Blood Feuds Trap Entire Generations

    Basmir Gjeloshaj, a young man from the north of Albania, has been confined to his home for most of his life, as described by Vincenzo Mattei for Al Jazeera. Walking outside could be deadly, not because of the novel coronavirus, but because his father’s murder has pulled him into a gjakmarrja (pronounced Jyak-MARR-Ya) — an Albanian blood feud. In recent months, the COVID-19 pandemic has swiftly halted daily life around the world and forced millions into isolation in their homes. The same fate has befallen hundreds of Albanians trapped inside, some for years on end, as a result of the region’s tradition of revenge killing.  

    These blood feuds are part of an ancient Albanian code of justice that obliges murder to be repaid with murder. Many of those involved in the feuds, including children or teenagers born into feuding families, are only safe from retaliation killings inside their homes. To step outside is to risk your life.

    A Question of Honor

    “I’m well, I’m isolating at home,” Nikollë Shullani said by phone from Shkodër, 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of the capital Tirana. He was referring to the government orders to self-isolate amid the spread of COVID-19 that has even reached his remote city. “Ngujim në shtëpi,” he said, using the same word for coronavirus-related isolation that is used for those locked inside because of a gjakmarrja. Shullani heads an organization called Missionaries of Peace and Reconciliation of Bloodshed, whose aim is to mediate the conflicts between feuding families.

    The goal is pajtimi, or reconciliation, which is achieved through a negotiation process between families. Traditionally the elderly, who are highly respected in Albanian culture, play a central role in these negotiations. Often, negotiations only begin years after the start of the conflict. Shullani has been successful in resolving 12 feuds, but he says that there are still at least 400 currently ongoing in northern Albania.

    These numbers are difficult to verify. In 2016, the chairman of the Committee of Nationwide Reconciliation (CNR) estimated that some 12,000 people have died in Albania’s blood feuds since 1991. The authorities recorded just three revenge killings in 2018, and Operazione Colomba, a volunteer organization, counted six murders “with blood feud elements” in 2016, two in 2015, four in 2014 and seven in 2013, according to a UK government report. But according to the CNR, as many as 1,000 families have been affected by the problem in 2018, with some 300 families living in fear for their lives.

    Blood feuds can begin from theft, threats or even insults — any action that questions one’s honor, which is of extreme importance in rural Albanian society. When such a dispute escalates to murder, the family of the victim is expected to obtain justice by killing the murderer or another male in his family. Then, the burden falls on that family to seek vengeance. This cycle can continue for generations, pulling in descendants who had nothing to do with the original conflict.

    The feuds are rooted in a code of laws known as the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini, which dates as far back as 5th century B.C., according to some scholars. It is named for the 15th-century Albanian nobleman Lekë Dukagjini, who codified the rules of the Kanun, which consists of 12 books and 1,291 articles. These laws are still well known among the northern malisors, or mountain people, and cover all aspects of life, from family and marriage to personal property and justice. They also lay down strict social rules, including that women cannot be targeted in blood feuds and that those who owe blood may not be targeted while inside their homes.

    This is why the men of families involved in gjak (blood) are often confined to their homes at risk of being killed, relying on the women in the family to bring home food and supplies. Even young boys can be targeted according to the Kanun, and lose their chance at an education unless their school sends a teacher to instruct them at home. Some children who were born into feuding families have been trapped indoors for most of their lives. 

    Many are paying for crimes they did not commit. In his article, Mattei recounts the plight of Gjion Mhilli, who “will forever remember the date of September 19, 1992, as the day his brother shot and killed a neighbour in a dispute over land. On the few occasions that Gjion has ventured outside since, he has been threatened or chased, often having to hide in the store rooms of sympathetic shopkeepers.”

    After centuries of practice, the Kanun was outlawed during the second half of the 20th century by Enver Hoxha, Albania’s communist dictator who ruled with an iron fist. Under his authoritarian regime, the practice completely halted. However, it saw a resurgence in rural Albania after the country’s turbulent transition to democracy in the 1990s, which left behind a frail and corruption-ridden government. The Kanun is still applied in the northern and central parts of Albania, and research from the British Embassy in Tirana concluded that these blood feuds are “largely restricted to remote pockets in the mountain north of the country.”  

    The Other Path

    Judges in Albania can often be bribed to dramatically reduce prison sentences, even in cases of murder, and Shullani explains that this weakness in Albania’s justice system is why the Kanun has reemerged in recent times. “The first best thing is the rule of law,” he said. “But when the law fails, the Kanun is the other path.” 

    Shullani recalled one feud that left a particularly strong impression on him — the story of a widow in a village near Shkodër. Her husband’s murderer was released from prison after only two years, which added insult to the pain of her loss. Her four sons lived abroad in Italy, and preferred to forgive the blood rather than initiate a feud, but the widow refused to pardon the murderer. She could not live with the dishonor that this would bring on her relatives and ancestors.

    Those who do not avenge a murdered relative face intense stigma in the region. “In some areas, the tradition of ‘coffee under the knee’ still exists, [whereby] on feast or wedding days coffee is not served at the table but at the level of the feet for those who did not avenge their killed relative,” writes Mattei. 

    Shullani has visited this widow 16 times, even with the village’s kryeplaku, or wise man, and other local elders in an effort to make peace. Her sons have begged her to forgive the murder, saying, “Mother, we want to forgive the blood of our father because we want to live,” Shullani related. “That is not a problem for me,” she replied. “I have four sons; one should give his life in the name of his father.” This widow took it upon herself to seek vengeance, even though feuds are usually fought among men in Albania’s patriarchal society. Her husband’s murderer is still in hiding out of fear that she will kill him, Shullani says.

    Embed from Getty Images

    Despite the barbaric nature of this ancient system, Shullani points out that the strict rules and established process for peacemaking set the blood feuds apart from the random, merciless crime that happens elsewhere. However, some have observed that the rules of the Kanun have begun to erode in recent years. The BBC quotes Liljana Luani, a teacher of children “involved in blood,” as saying: “Nowadays neither the Kanun nor the laws of the state are being followed. It has happened that there have been women killed and children killed” — a violation of the ancient Kanun. “I think the state law enforcement authorities should do more and that they are not working properly.”

    The Albanian Penal Code carries a 30-year sentence for blood feud murders and recent years have seen renewed efforts by police to squash the problem. Still, a report by Cedoca, the Documentation and Research Department of the Office of the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons of Belgium, cited meeting with “two experts who expressed strong doubt that the police is capable of controlling, monitoring, preventing and prosecuting the contemporary blood feud phenomenon,” stating that suspects are often released again after an initial arrest.

    Nonetheless, the British Embassy report quoted a local representative of the national ombudsman as saying “the presence of the law has very much advanced nowadays. In the last 5-6 years the law and order were reestablished. Closed cases have been re-opened and potential blood feud cases are treated with particular attention, even in the remote areas. If something happens, the police will intervene nowadays.”

    Shullani and Luani have both dedicated their life’s work to the victims of these feuds. They both agree that the blood feuds will not end until Albania’s government revitalizes its justice system once and for all.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    Armenia and Azerbaijan Clash Again

    The on-again, off-again conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the border region of Nagorno-Karabakh became hot again on the weekend of July 11. Skirmishes are common in the contested region, which is known as Artsakh to the Armenian side, but this recent round of deadly attacks is the most serious escalation since the Four Day War in 2016 and is outside the typical point of contact. As usual, international calls for restraint and a diplomatic solution have been voiced, but internal politics between the two sides continue to amplify their serious disagreements. It seems as though the situation will continue to escalate, but the current circumstances are unlikely to spark a full-scale confrontation.

    As in the case of other post-Soviet frozen conflicts — as well as land disputes in the North Caucasus — the dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh is intrinsically linked to the early history of the 20th century. Shifts of power resultant from the loss of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, the collapse of the Russian Empire and the territorial delineations configured in the formative days of the Soviet Union and its subsequent break-up created borders that did not appease all sides of the local populations. Nagorno-Karabakh has an ethnic Armenian majority, but political maneuvering in the 1920s handed its jurisdiction, and thus international recognition, to Azerbaijan. Armenia continued to voice its discontent over this arrangement, but matters of borders and ethnicity remained contained while the territories were part of a wider empire with one central government.

    As the Soviet Union neared its end, the question of Nagorno-Karabakh reemerged as Karabakh Armenians sought the reconnection of the territory with Armenia proper. Subsequent political actions, including an unofficial referendum and a petition to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to sanction the territorial transfer, infuriated the Azeri public. In 1988, the Nagorno-Karabakh War officially broke out just as inter-ethnic relations deteriorated, killing between 20,000 and 30,000 people. A further referendum in 1991, boycotted by Azerbaijan, quashed the prior plea to join Armenia in favor of the pursuit of independence for Nagorno-Karabakh. Fighting escalated to the point that both Armenia and Azerbaijan accused each other of ethnic cleansing. It was at this point that the international community turned its attention to the regional conflict in the South Caucasus.

    Contemporary Crisis

    In 1994, the Russian Federation mediated a ceasefire between Armenia, Azerbaijan and the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh (as of 2017, officially the Republic of Artsakh). For the most part, this agreement has kept hostilities contained, minus the ongoing instances of low-level clashes and explicit violations by both sides. For example, the Four Day War in April 2016 witnessed Azerbaijan regain “two strategic hills, a village, and a total of about 2,000 hectares.” Nonetheless, Armenia has not fulfilled concessions required by UN Security Council resolutions, such as the withdrawal of its troops, leaving Azerbaijan perpetually frustrated.

    There has been a continued push for engagement and peace talks by the international community, primarily the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe’s (OSCE) Minsk Group, chaired by Russia, France and the United States, since 1992. Still, there are no official relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan as a result, and it has been difficult to breathe life into peace talks in a decades-long conflict.

    It is unclear what exactly sparked the current round of hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan, but both sides blame the other for the escalation. The heightened tensions came only days after Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, declared that peace talks to resolve the conflict had essentially have stalled. One key difference between the current situation and those in the past is that the deadly encounter between forces did not occur directly in Nagorno-Karabakh, but rather in the northern Tavush section of the Armenian border.

    On July 12, the Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan announced that Armenia launched an offensive that consequently killed two Azerbaijani servicemen and left five others wounded. In retaliation, Azeri forces launched a counterstrike, setting the scene for yet another protracted spat. Attacks have continued almost on a daily basis since the outbreak of the current impasse, and there have been numerous reports of shelling, tank movements and the use of combat unmanned aerial vehicles and grenade launchers.

    While actions on the ground may be dramatic, they remain at a low level. On the other hand, authorities in Armenia and Azerbaijan up the ante through heightened threats and verbal tit-for-tats. This is typical of ethnic spats that rely heavily on nationalist rhetoric to amplify cohesive public support for military actions, whether offensive or defensive. In a case of a highly provocative statement that should raise eyebrows, the head of Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Defense press service stated that “The Armenian side should not forget that the latest missile systems, which are in service with our army, allow hitting the Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant with high precision, which can lead to a huge catastrophe for Armenia.”

    A retort by the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted that such possible violations of international law are “an explicit demonstration of state terrorism and genocidal intent of Azerbaijan” as well as “leadership of Azerbaijan acts as a menace to all the peoples of the region, including its own people.”

    Too Late for Diplomacy?

    After 30 years of a tense and barely tolerated relationship, it seems unlikely that any political or diplomatic solution will result from this latest round of tensions. Indeed, a significant diplomatic effort has been expended to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and wider disputes between Armenia and Azerbaijan to no avail. At this time, it is simply enough that the sides generally adhere to the 1994 ceasefire and engage with the Minsk Group. For instance, the OSCE institution released a press statement that the belligerents of the conflict must “resume substantive negotiations as soon as possible and emphasize the importance of returning OSCE monitors to the region as soon as circumstances allow.”

    International voices have all chimed in and called for restraint by both Armenia and Azerbaijan. Besides being a co-chair for the Minsk Group, Russia is understandably concerned about the clashes in its neighborhood. Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko reiterated sentiments similar to the OSCE, calling on “both parties to immediately ceasefire and start negotiations in order to prevent a recurrence of these incidents.” On the other hand, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu called on Armenia to “pull its head together” and subsequently expressed that “Whatever solution Baku prefers for the occupied lands and Karabakh, we will stand by Azerbaijan.”

    The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh consequently slammed the Turkish position, condemned the destabilizing actions of Azerbaijan in the Tavush region, and echoed the need to return to the OSCE table. With numerous political actors and geopolitical interests at play, the fight over such a small but strategically important swathe of land becomes much more complex once compounded by the factors of ethnicity, history and national pride.

    Embed from Getty Images

    But it seems unlikely that the current situation will transition into another full-scale war. Rather, it is fair to assume that actions on the ground could escalate for the short term, but any protracted operation would be a serious regional blow to civilian populations and the energy sector. The Nagorno-Karabakh War of 1988-1994 displaced some 860,000 on both sides, and a similar outcome is possible today, with skirmishes occurring in populated areas.

    Secondly, the Armenia-Azerbaijan borderlands are important transit points for oil and gas pipelines. Entities and media that follow energy markets have already raised concerns over the current fighting and how it may influence the flow of hydrocarbons. The ongoing situation around Tavush province is certainly more serious because it is closer to the South Caucasian Pipeline (SCP) that runs from the Azeri capital Baku to Tbilisi, Georgia, and then Erzurum, in Turkey. Furthermore, the SCP is part of the wider Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) and Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) — a network set to deliver gas to Europe upon completion later this year. These factors will obviously be taken into consideration by Azerbaijan’s strategists as they move forward with their plans in the region. It would be short-sighted to destabilize this network when diplomatic options are at hand to at least keep the status quo for the sake of business.

    Additionally, the South Caucasus is a busy neighborhood, geopolitically speaking. In the case that the situation escalates and interests are at risk, one could expect greater involvement from Russia and Turkey. Although the Turkish Foreign Ministry gave a statement in strong support of Baku, it does not mean that Ankara would be willing to send forces. Moscow has little taste for engagement in a military operation either. Further, even the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) — a military alliance composed of countries from the Commonwealth of Independent States, including Armenia and Russia — promote a political solution rather than a military one. The international community and organizations openly promote a return to the Minsk Group’s negotiation table and, ideally, this will be the immediate result of the ongoing skirmishes.

    The clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan are likely to continue in the short term just as their non-existent diplomatic relations will endure without the political will for an inclusive political solution. Tavush province has taken the spotlight between the foes right now, but the recent occurrences are being widely viewed as the greater Nagorno-Karabakh conflict due to the proximity and the historical antagonism over the border. While it is unfortunate that cross-border shelling and conflict has attracted international interest to the South Caucasus yet again, it is not unexpected as matters never really settle to a level of peaceful monotony in the region.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More