One World, Many Peaces

Afghan Taliban 'Code of Conduct' Calls for Immunity, Restraint and Discipline

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The Taliban are circulating a 13-chapter code of conduct for their fighters in Afghanistan, requiring them to avoid harming civilians and members of the country’s fragile government. The aim of the slim but significant volume is to win over the “hearts and minds” of the nation, what first the USSR and now the US have tried in vain to do, and the Taliban arguably once did. What is involved in this Islam-based code of military conduct?

Issued by Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar, the booklet surprisingly states that fighters must not discriminate as to who has civilian immunity: “The utmost effort should be made to avoid civilian casualties…" and "The mujahideen must avoid discrimination based on tribal roots, language or geographic background." However, the code also supports in strictly circumscribing suicide bombings and prisoner exchanges, which must authorized at the highest levels.

The Taliban code belongs to a long global tradition. Two historic codes also condone and control violence. The most famous is European chivalry in the Middle Ages, which mandated that knights do no harm to civilians while ritualizing how they killed each other. The other is the Bushido code of nearly contemporaneous Samurai Japan which did likewise though on different grounds. These and other codes of conduct have yet to be comparatively studied as such.

Both NATO and Afghani officials were quick to denounce the code as propaganda masking a vicious and disorganized enemy. If they instead used it as an overture for normalizing relations with their enemies, peace may come sooner. Of course, had Taliban fighters been acting as the code prescribed, there would be no impetus to issue it. Still, one step towards peace is better than no step toward peace.

Even if, as the UK’s Telegraph South Asia Editor Dean Nelson suggests, the aim of the code is to assert the dominance of Omar’s faction over semi-autonomous others, their willingness to curb the use of violence is commendable. Perhaps it should even be circulated more widely by NATO as misinformation, assuming of course that it isn't to begin with. Doing so could turn out to be two steps forward and no step back.

These literary efforts on the part of Taliban leaders to restrain and discipline fighters in the hopes of limiting civilian and other causalities seems to me to be quite in line with what NATO is there to do, aside from killing them. Now that it has been issued, however, it remains to be seen to what extent the code is adhered to as a current event creating the future of Afghanistan.

China and Taiwan in Historic First Dialogue Offer New Diplomatic Model

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The first official, direct dialogue between China and Taiwan took place yesterday in the shadows of the US-China summit, which perhaps purposefully drew much more media attention. Sixty years after civil war between the nationalists who escaped to the island and the communists who took over the mainland, their leaders urged lasting peace in a stunningly strategic diplomatic maneuver.

To navigate around the hot-button issue of Taiwanese sovereignty, the leaders exchanged direct messages not as heads of state, but as party leaders. China's Hu Jintao sought to "continue to promote peaceful development in cross-strait relations." In response, Taiwan's Ma Ying-jeou urged ongoing "efforts to consolidate peace" and regional stability. China still claims the island of Taiwan, while its government is otherwise sovereign. Improved indirect relations recently set the stage for this breakthrough.

The brevity of their telegraphs is made up for by billions of dollars of trade between them as China's government shifts the country to a more consumer society. Meanwhile, Taiwan needs new markets for its prized electronic, computer and other goods as the U.S. Economic slowdown continues. The direct dialogue also calls into question the need for U.S. or other mediators, a given previously.

This delicate new mode of international interaction can now serve as a model for how other, similarly-situated countries can spark a conversation more conducive to peace than stubborn silence. Like Taiwan, South Korea is staunchly capitalist and democratic. Like China, North Korea is committed to communism, at least politically. Were the two Koreas to take their cue from this first contact, their differences would seem equally surmountable.

The unprecedented willingness of nations to reach across ideological lines and chasms between economic systems formerly considered too deep to meet is a tricky but promising current event. The future such willingness suggests is one in which compulsory conformity is replaced with pragmatic respect for differences, or “one world, many peaces.”

Oil for Peace Works in Sudan, but How?

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The precarious peace between Sudan’s government-controlled north backed by Arab tribes and the semi-autonomous south controlled by rebel Black tribes overcame a major challenge yesterday when oil-rich lands between them were divided equitably according to each. 

The settlement, acclaimed by both sides and their supporters, is also another major victory for the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, Netherlands. Presiding arbitrator Pierre-Marie Dupuy and the parties involved deserve Nobel Peace Prize nomination. With billions of dollars, millions of lives, thousands of jobs, hundreds of negotiators and decades of civil war in the balance, two questions remain: Will it last? And is this a peacemaking and keeping model applicable elsewhere in Sudan and others hot spots around the world?

A year ago, the Abyei region and its villages were engulfed in a brutal battle between the Arab Misseriah tribe of the north and the southern Black Dinka tribe. The two tribes, with their governments backing, then sought peace through settling territorial claims (including coveted oil lands) at The Hague. Now provisionally secured, many Sudanese and outsiders are pushing for the same peacemaking model to be applied in the country's northwest region, Darfur.

That The Hague, originally intended as an inter-national court, is effectively being used for settling intra-national disputes is nothing short of astonishing. If only war crimes courts were likewise. What is still needed, however, is an extra-national arbitration system for intra-national disputes that takes a proactive rather than reactive approach. For now, the oil for peace strategy working in Sudan is a promising current event opening up new possibilities for the future.

F-22 Debate Shadows U.S. Military Buildup in Columbia

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Below the media's military radar now constantly scanning two major warzones, Iraq and Afghanistan, and several other ongoing hotspots ranging from Iran to North Korea, the U.S.' military buildup in Columbia is for the most part going unnoticed. Ostensibly to "train" native forces (a vague euphemism quickly getting old) to combat drug-funded leftist guerillas in a longstanding conflict with the government, the pending increase in American personnel and equipment did not go unnoticed by neighboring Venezuela's leader and among the most acrimoniously anti-American, Hugo Chavez.

Could this be a cover for future military action, or at least military hedging, against Venezuela, say if the so far cordial relationship between Obama and Chavez becomes bitter, i.e even more than it was with Bush? While Obama and his team are touting a victory in halting the production of seven F-22 bombers (while allocating the resources to make other if smaller military planes), few are paying attention to the fact that over $4 billion in military and other aid has been given by the U.S. to Columbia since 2000, with 1,400 service personnel and military contractors mandated by the U.S. Congress. The fifth round of U.S.-Columbia negotiations, intended to close the buildup deal, are set for next week.

Columbia's President Alvaro Uribe insists that the increase in U.S. military presence at two of his country's bases are meant to support them, not to open new ones under American jurisdiction. Considering the widening and deepening worldwide military presence of the U.S. armed forces since World War Two, from Japan to Germany and the Earth's two poles, this move shouldn't come as such a surprise, which makes it all the more shocking. With some wounds still unhealed between Columbia and Venezuela, the U.S. may be imprecating itself into another quagmire current event creating the future.

Realigning the Non-Aligned Movement for Real Change: Lessons from Egypt

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The Non-Aligned Movement of over 115 nations was once a historically unique and periodically powerful vehicle in which the weakest and poorest could stand up to the superpowers, then the US and USSR, and their ideological clubs. Their two-day summit in Egypt wrapping up makes clear not only that the non-aligned need to realign themselves vis-à-vis each other and the post-Cold War world. Above all, the summit’s important if limited outcomes showed why they should and how the world would benefit.

The Non-Aligned Movement was a pragmatic proponent of peace and prosperity worldwide when the world was at the brink of nuclear annihilation and economic turmoil. Bringing together countries of all political creeds, it became a United Nations power bloc which paved the way towards decolonization and development in what, correspondingly, became known as the Third World. In that tradition, within its forum, two nuclear powers with serious grievances against each other (Pakistan and India) pledged to cooperate against terrorists. The group’s reaching out to China again points to another ongoing global realignment.

Raul Castro's vague proclamations on Cuba's support for a new economic order harkens back to when the World Bank and IMF were formed in response to demands by the Non-Aligned Movement for a more equitable global economic system, which have since failed it. The stalled Doha economic talks are a strong echo of the Non-Aligned position. The G8 was a response to a now defunct economic arm of the Non-Aligned, the G88, and OPEC was an offshoot. The world would lose a piece of itself if the Non-Aligned Movement were to come to a halt: an alternative world system based on the principles of diversity and unity (note: One World, Many Peaces).

With renewed citizen involvement, with skilled and pragmatic leadership along the lines of its founders (Nehru, Tito, and Sadat); with support from other associations of nations such as the Organization of American States, the European Union and the African Union; with a total internal reorganization and specific strategies tied to tangible goals, and of course with a new name, the Non-Aligned Movement could become one of the world’s premier and powerful vehicles of peace and prosperity once again. For the Non-Aligned Movement to remain a current event, it must realign itself in the present for the future.

Ban on English Language in Malaysia Causes More Problems than it Solves

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After months of heavy lobbying by socially minded ultra-nationalists, the Malaysian state government has legislated a ban of the English language in sectors of higher education. This bold move against multilingualism in a country that was once a British colony has infuriated business leaders and educators while, proponents argue, giving more Malay students a chance at college.

The pressure for universities worldwide to ensure student fluency in English is at once  pragmatic and problematic.  Since 2003, math and science courses at the university level have been taught in English after Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad deemed that doing so was essential to keeping the country's workforce competitive in the global economy. His successor has caved in to pressure to remove this law and revert to the Bahasa language by 2012, for practical social reasons as well as nationalistic ones.

On the one hand, those against the English ban argue that a multilingual workforce is vital to attracting multinational companies to the country, without which a dearth of jobs may lead to social unrest. On the other hand, those against the ban claim that it levels the playing field for aspiring students from rural areas who rarely receive any education in English, unlike their urban counterparts who often do from an early age. So the dilemma can be put thus: learn English and work, don’t learn English and go to college.

There is a deep disjunction between linguistic catering on the part of labor producers to multinational corporations, which are ironically trying to cater to local consumer markets in their own languages. The notion of "English as a world language" and national languages do not necessarily have to conflict with the notion of language rights as human rights. But banning languages for any reason creates more problems than it solves. English as a global lingua franca is a current event a long time in the making, however we must beware of it creating a monolingual rather than a multilingual future. 

See Antony Adolf's Multilingualism and Immigration in U.S. Public Policy for more on these issues.

Why the G8 is the Past, the G5 the Future and How Activists Need to Refocus

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Members of the G5 (Mexico, Brazil, China, India and South Africa ) are making their differences with the G8 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the US) clearer at their summit in Italy than ever before. However, they are doing so only according to the agenda they were handed. In this light, protesters may be mistaking longstanding enemies for potential friends, a risk strategic activists should be less eager to take in seeking to make a greater impact.
 
A relatively minor force at such summits for five years now, the G5 is starting to steal the G8's thunder, if in some cases to environmentalists' dismay. With even bona fide G8 members such as France and Germany calling for a more inclusive and representative world economic summit, it may not be so long before the two Gs become one, and then some. How can activists shape this seeming inevitability coagulation, or at least prepare for it?
 
Reviving the formation of multilateral trade agreements to replace the gross asymmetries of bilateral trade between more and less developed countries (the crux of the stalled Doha talks) is probably where all this is heading. If so, protesters today may be pissing on the wrong tree, missing an opportunity to align themselves with major economic and political powers who already share many of their interests, and could possibly have their ears open to others.
 
Doing so would surely be no less effective than screaming on a freedom high in the G8's ears, deaf to all but their own narrow interests. The current G8 is not the past in the sense that it has or will soon disappear, but rather in that it's predominance will continue to wane as that of the G5 waxes. The recent, formal formation of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) to counter the more and more amorphous Western bloc can be taken as a sign of events to come, and indicative of the new roles activists can and should take on.
 
Instead of protesting to no avail against the G8, activists of all denominations should be trying to get the G5 on their side. Because if they do, the G8 will sooner or later follow. It's time to stop being purely anti- and start being more pro-. Che Guevara shirts and confrontations with police may become a thing of the past too, if and when they are replaced with more effective business and law suits with a mind for the future rather than nostalgia for 1968.
 
The G8 and G5 are and will continue to be key current events creating the future, especially if their respective power positions are changing, let alone being reversed. Whether or not selective activism against or for them is (or, more precisely, becomes) effective depends entirely on how, and how well, activists refocus their efforts.

Chinese Riots Rooted in Conflation of Religion, Race and Class

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Rather than Chinese government crackdown deaths, those in Urumqi today were mostly by rioters against their targets, with their respective and deep-seated identities as the ultimate causes.  The roots of the Chinese riots defy the easy categorizations upon which most media outlets depend in crafting 'breaking news' stories and weaving them into a series meant to attract your mouse clicks. Here is the gist and background of the situation as it is still unfolding.

 

Muslim Chinese (present in the northwest Xinjiang region since the times of Genghis Khan, c. 1200) have resented the central governments suppression of their religious practices, which in their recent communist manifestations were supposed to be alleviated by economic prosperity. Instead, the prosperity went mostly to ethnic Han Chinese of the region, creating a two-tiered society with Muslims at bottom and Han on top. A secessionist movement grew and violence erupted in the early 1990s, but all seemed to be quiet on the northwestern front until today.

 

While the roots of the conflict are thus clear, what remains unclear is the trigger for today's street violence in which about two-hundred were killed and many times more wounded from knives, home-made bombs and other weapons of minor destruction.  Confusing the roots of the conflict in the conflation of religion, race and class with its immediate causes (yet unknown), journalists have scrambled, speculated and spectacularized instead of getting their facts straight and relevant quotes, and leaving the commentary to the commentators. It was even suggested that the riots were meant to further tarnish China's reputation abroad. 

 

What Chiang Kai Chek did with nationalism first (1920s), and Mao Zedong did with communism second (1940s), was to use ideologically-defined traits to minimize or eliminate traits stemming from other traditions. These, of course, included religion, race and class, sowing the seeds of unrest. Expatriate Uyghur Groups like the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) in Munich and the US-based Uighur American Association played up the government response to the riots but said little about their compatriots use of violence, the instigation of which remains unclear to outsiders but not the root causes. This is when the value of the non-violence espoused by expatriate leader the Dalai Lama from nearby Tibet becomes obvious.

 

Most major news providers were desperate for a scoop, resulting in piecemeal coverage even compared to the Iranian protests. Reuters was most concerned with how the riots would affect Chinese markets, consumers and producers; AP and Huffington Post dug for civil liberties issues, and have yet to find one; CNN and Fox each sought pre-internet political intrigue in their own way, sticking close to government-fed lines (US and China) and pundit performances; the BBC characteristically did a little of all the above. They were all looking for the wrong thing in the right place. No Al-Qaeda here. What's news is what's not news: Twitter is shut down.

 

It may be that this uprising marks the rise of a time when not governments acting indirectly, but concerned and somehow connected people acting directly from one country can and do influence the events in and directions taken by another country without leaving their metaphoric armchairs.  That is, the expatriates and affiliates no longer need the instrument of government to carry out their plans abroad, although they may need to ensure that their plans are not prevented from being carried out from where they are or where they air aiming. 

 

So while Obama and Medvedev are busy making nice and getting rid of not enough nuclear weapons in the process, the Summer of 2009 is shaping up to be one of international protests perhaps comparable in scale to those of 1848, the year social uprisings were brutally crushed by newly empowered national governments around the globe.  Let's hope the current events of today work out better for everyone than those then, creating a future in which such upheavals have found more peaceful vehicles.

New Worldwide Ant Colony's Advantage Over Humanity? Non-Violence

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This is not science fiction: an ant megacolony originally from Argentina has spread (with human help) around the globe, making it the most widespread species on earth after ours. One evolutionary advantage they have over us is that they will not harm one of their own, no matter where they're from. 
 
Saying the same about humans would be, well, science fiction. The facts are that while these ants (Linepithema humile) are hostile to other insects in their adopted ecosystems, when they meet their kind their very biological features trigger intra-species non-violence regardless of individuals' origin. That would be like the Taliban smelling Americans during this massive attack and proposing to smoke some opium with them instead of fighting.
 
"The enormous extent of this population," on all continents except Antarctica, "is paralleled only by human society,"  writes the entomologist who discovered the connection. It has been known for decades that intra-species non-violence vastly out-proportions lethal behavior in all species, but these ants are the first to be so on a global scale. For all the problems that invasive species cause, this one in its lessons may have some much-needed solutions to offer. Now we turn to science fiction.

"Humans created this great non-aggressive ant population," the researchers write in Insect Sociaux, the journal for the study of social insects. Imagine if us humans would only create and perpetuate that trait in ourselves, culturally if not biologically. This new worldwide ant megacolony's advantage in non-violence is a current event for their species,  and may learning from it help create a better future for 'us', in the sense that there will cease to be a corresponding 'them'.