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	Recognise us! The Unrepresented Nations & Peoples Organisation by Andrew Mueller OpenDemocracy Netherlands   12 - 7 - 2005   The world’s stateless nations are fighting against local oppressors and global invisibility by sharing experiences, problems – and soccer skills. Andrew Mueller reports from the conference of the Unrepresented Nations & Peoples Organisation.   Football matches pitting the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria against Southern Cameroons, and West Papua versus South Moluccas, soccer games occurred, in June 2005, in the The Hague, and they may – eventually – add up to the precursor of a small revolution in the geopolitical consciousness.   This four-team tournament (won, incidentally, by South Moluccas in a spirited 3-2 final against Ichkeria) was a curtain-raiser to the seventh general assembly of the Unrepresented Nations & Peoples Organisation (Unpo), a sort of un-UN for countries which, if the United Nations were a nightclub, would be rebuffed by the bouncers with a firm “your name’s not down, you’re not coming in”.   Yet, the first Unpo Cup was judged a great success. Indeed, one of the resolutions agreed by the general assembly was the establishment of a full-scale World Cup for non-nations, an event which could result in some truly amazing contests: Tatarstan vs Buryatia, Cabinda vs Nagaland, Kurdistan vs Somaliland, East Turkestan vs Circassia, Zanzibar vs Scania, Assyria vs Mapuche.   The Unpo general assembly on 24-26 June looked like any international summit, the only immediately noticeable difference was that the flags were not the ones usually flying at such wingdings. These, instead, were the banners of those nationalities who, due to varying combinations of bad luck, betrayal, occupation, injustice, invasion, indifference and the whims of history, have missed out on the security and standing of statehood.   Some of the entities represented by these flags of the Unpo delegations were representatives from Chuvash, Abkhazia, Aceh, Khmer Krom, and the Buffalo River Dene Nation, an Indian community in Canada.   A couple are reasonably well-known: Kosova (Kosovo), which was bombed into a limbo of semi-independence from Serbia by Nato in 1999; Tibet, which has become a popular cause among actors, rock groups and others whose likelihood of being able to point to Tibet on a map would seem a poor bet. Another is a full-fledged first-world powerhouse: Taiwan, owner of the world’s 17th-largest economy and a formidable modern military.   There were also a couple of delegations clamouring for entry to this club for peoples with nowhere else to go: Baluchistan and Talish, both of whom reacted to their formal admissions to the Unpo with a delight which was genuinely moving.   The existence of the Unpo and, more to the point, the sixty organisations and parties which constitute its membership, seems an anomaly. We are, allegedly, and especially in Europe, living in an increasingly post-state world, where national identity counts for less and less, and borders for even less than that. This is, of course, a wholly logical approach: given that we do absolutely nothing to earn or deserve a national identity beyond being born or raised on one or other side of a line on a map, it is absurd that people regard their nationality as important.   We all do, though: go anywhere in the world, stop anyone in the street, and ask them to describe themselves. In no particular order, they’ll tell you their name, their job, and where they’re from. That being the case, it is possible to imagine the anguish of people for whom where they’re from isn’t an instantly recognisable brand but the beginning of a sequence of bewildered questions.   I can go anywhere in the world and tell people I’m Australian. While many people will have only a cartoonish image of what that means, the not displeasing idea often arises that, despite appearances, I’m a rugged son of the bush, capable of killing a crocodile with my bare hands. At least no one asks: “where the hell’s Australia?” or “is that even a place?”   Statehood, and the right to think of oneself as the citizen of a state, are precious prizes which history and geography distribute with terrifying caprice, something illustrated perfectly by the situation of the Unpo’s office in The Hague.   The Netherlands is a small country with no obvious natural borders which has been invaded, occupied, liberated, united and separated many times, and which could have ceased to exist on several occasions; it was once, indeed, rent apart by a secessionist movement similar to those attending the general assembly, when the southern Netherlands seceded in 1830 and established itself as Belgium.   There is no especially good reason why the Netherlands should have a seat in the United Nations, ambassadors in every capital, a monarchy, its own military and a place in the World Cup draw and why Kurdistan (to pick but one example) should not.   The Unpo is regarded by the members I met at the general assembly as an important and necessary halfway house, especially in facilitating contact with international bodies like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, whose attentions are often all too necessary in places where questions of nationality and sovereignty are in dispute. In its fourteen-year history, six of its former members have been promoted up a division to full-fledged statehood: Estonia, Latvia, Armenia, Georgia, Palau and East Timor.   Further Links:   UNPO home page: http://www.unpo.org/   International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs: http://www.iwgia.org/sw325.asp   Minority Rights Group: http://www.minorityrights.org/ Visit the related web page
	The very idea of a war on terror was profoundly misconceived by David Clark, Derrick Jackson The Guardian / Boston Globe UK / USA   July 9, 2005   The very idea of a war on terror was profoundly misconceived, by David Clark. (The Guardian)   It must now be obvious, even to those who would like us to think otherwise, that the war on terror is failing. This is not to say that the terrorists are winning. Their prospects of constructing the medieval pan-Islamic caliphate of their fantasies are as negligible today as they were four years ago when they attacked America.   It is simply to point out that their ability to bring violence and destruction to our streets is as strong as ever and shows no sign of diminishing. We may capture the perpetrators of Thursday''''s bombings, but others will follow to take their place. Moreover, the actions of our leaders have made this more likely, not less. It''''s time for a rethink.   The very idea of a war on terror was profoundly misconceived from the start. Rooted in traditional strategic thought, with its need for fixed targets and an identifiable enemy, the post-9/11 response focused myopically on the problem of how and where to apply military power. Once the obvious and necessary task of tackling Bin Laden''''s presence in Afghanistan had been completed, those charged with prosecuting the war needed a new target to aim at.   In his book Against All Enemies, the former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke chronicles the inability of senior administration officials to grasp the nature of the threat directed against them. Even before 9/11 they were fixated with the notion that behind a successful terrorist network like al-Qaida must be state sponsorship; destroy the state, destroy the threat, ran the theory.   In this environment it was easy for the neoconservatives to win approval for their prefabricated plan to attack Iraq. But al-Qaida has never depended on state sponsorship, except in the wholly unintended sense that the US-funded campaign against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan brought its members together and gave them their first taste of jihad.   Indeed it is a mistake even to regard al-Qaida as an organization in the traditional sense of the term. At most it is now little more than an idea, fusing ideology with operational method, both of which can be accessed freely via the internet. It is quite meaningless to talk about destroying the "terrorist infrastructure", unless we propose to carpet bomb Microsoft. We have entered the era of do-it-yourself terrorism.   Bin Laden must be brought to justice, but he has become a strategic irrelevance in the struggle against terrorism. Wherever he is - on the run in the badlands of Waziristan or holed up in someone''''s cellar - he is not directing operations. He doesn''''t need to. He has provided the inspiration and example for a new generation of terrorists who have never been to his training camps in Afghanistan and whose only connection to al-Qaida is a shared desire to lash out at the west.   It should be clear by now that we cannot defeat this threat with conventional force alone, however necessary that may be in specific circumstances. Even good policing, as we have found to our cost, will have only limited effect in reducing its capacity to harm. The opposite response - negotiation - is equally futile. How can you negotiate with a phenomenon that is so elusive and diffuse? And even if you could, what prospect would there be of reaching a reasonable settlement?   An effective strategy can be developed, but it means turning our attention away from the terrorists and on to the conditions that allow them to recruit and operate. No sustained insurgency can exist in a vacuum. At a minimum, it requires communities where the environment is permissive enough for insurgents to blend in and organize without fear of betrayal. This does not mean that most members of those communities approve of what they are doing. It is enough that there should be a degree of alienation sufficient to create a presumption against cooperating with the authorities. We saw this in Northern Ireland.   From this point of view, it must be said that everything that has followed the fall of Kabul has been ruinous to the task of winning over moderate Muslim opinion and isolating the terrorists within their own communities. In Iraq we allowed America to rip up the rule book of counter-insurgency with a military adventure that was dishonestly conceived and incompetently executed. Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed by US troops uninterested in distinguishing between combatant and noncombatant, or even counting the dead. The hostility engendered has been so extreme that the CIA has been forced to conclude that Iraq may become a worse breeding ground for international terrorism that Afghanistan was. Bin Laden can hardly believe his luck.   The political dimensions of this problem mean that there can be no hope of defeating terrorism until we are ready to take legitimate Arab grievances seriously. We must start by acknowledging that their long history of engagement with the west is one that has left many Arabs feeling humiliated and used. There is more to this than finding a way of bringing the occupation of Iraq to an end. We cannot seriously claim to care for the rights of Arabs living in Iraq when it is obvious that we care so little for Arabs living in Palestine. The Palestinians need a viable state, but all the indications suggest that the Bush administration is preparing to bounce the Palestinians into accepting a truncated entity that will lack the basic characteristics of either viability or statehood. That must not be allowed to succeed.   At its inception post-9/11, the war on terror was shaped by the fact that it was American blood that had been shed. Having stood with America, we have a right to a greater say in how we tackle the terrorism menance. The current approach is failing and it''''s time for a change.   (David Clark is a former Labour government adviser).   July 8, 2005   The United States engages in its own war of propaganda, by Derrick Jackson. (Boston Globe)   To this day, there has been no major acknowledgement, let alone apology, by President Bush or Tony Blair for the massive amounts of carnage we created in a war waged over what turned out to be a lie, the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.   ''''We don''''t do body counts," said both General Tommy Franks, former Iraqi commander, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. When Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt was asked about the images of American soldiers killing innocent civilians on Arab television, Kimmitt said: ''''My solution is quite simple: Change the channel. Change the channel to a legitimate, authoritative, honest news station. The stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources. That is propaganda. And that is lies."   The United States waged its own war of propaganda by refusing to conduct a legitimate, authoritative, honest accounting of the deaths of innocent civilians. As it urged people to change the channel, the Bush administration cut off all channels to finding out what we did to women, men, and children who were shopping, working, or leaving their mosques. In an invasion based on falsehoods, the truth of the many civilian deaths might have been too hard for Americans to take, and support for the war might have ended in the first few weeks.   The propaganda of an invasion with invisible innocents surely allowed Bush to seamlessly switch his stated reason from the unique horrors of WMD to liberating an oppressed people. It is a lot easier to tell the world you are their great liberator if you do not have to own up to the thousands of dead people who will never get the chance to vote in that free election. It sounds a little bit like people who say African-Americans should be thankful for slavery because they are no longer in Africa.   Worse, this denial of death, in a war that did not have to happen, is sure to fuel the very terrorism we say we will defeat. The innocents in the so-called war on terror are always ''''our" citizens or the citizens of our allies. The only innocent Iraqis are those killed by ''''insurgents."   This posturing of America as the great innocent, when everyone knows we have killed innocents ourselves, is likely only to make us look more like the devil in the eyes of a potential suicide bomber.
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