Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Sickles, Hammers, Stars and Bars

Recently, the United States was shaken to its core by a large white nationalist/supremacist and Neo-Nazi rally in the sleepy little college town of Charlottesville, Virginia. Violence broke out at the rally and a young woman named Heather Heyer lost her life in the subsequent car attack.

This "Unite the Right" Rally, was organized as a protest against the proposed removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Many protestors carried the infamous battle flag of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, often referred to as the Stars and Bars. 

In recent years, the United States has wrestled with the question of when, if ever, the display of this flag is appropriate. Some argue it is a vital piece of Southern pride and heritage, a symbol of the resolve of the people. Others decry it as an inherently white supremacist flag, citing its use by groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Indeed, that flag is often compared to the red, white and black swastika flag once used by Nazi Germany. 

Personal display of the Stars and Bars is not illegal, and strong arguments exist that even with the extremely negative connotations of the Stars and Bars, it should remain available to use on a personal basis. Groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union have defended the rights of white nationalists and Neo-Nazis to march with that flag as hate speech is still considered constitutionally protected free speech and assembly. 

The flag is still flown at many Confederate memorials, and this has also been a point of controversy. The memorials are considered inherently traitorous as the Confederacy did try to break away from the United States, as well as an enabling symbol of the racism which has tarnished much of American history. 

Some do not want these memorials gone as they fear it will make the history behind them fade away. Some believe these memorials should be razed entirely because of their white supremacist connotations. Indeed, many of the monuments were erected during the Civil Rights Movement and dedicated by the Ku Klux Klan, an unmistakable symbol of white supremacists.

Others believe the memorials can exist, but should only appear in museums and at the Civil War battlefields where they became stained with blood.

Even then, there exist gray areas. On Georges Island in Boston Harbor, deep into what was once Union territory, there exists a large headstone which memorializes thirteen Confederate soldiers who died as prisoners of war on the island. The headstone was put there by the Daughters of the Confederacy in 1963, as both the Civil Rights Movement and Civil War centennial were in progress. The memorial is currently boarded up and some are calling for its removal, but it does not really glorify the Confederate cause in the same way a triumphant statue of General Lee or Jackson may. It is little more than a headstone not unlike what you'd see in a civilian cemetery. 

Symbolism is powerful, and the Stars and Bars has counterparts in other parts of the world. For centuries the swastika was a symbol of luck and good fortune in parts of Asia, but it is synonymous with one of the purest forms of evil in Europe and the Americas. Japan’s Rising Sun flag is still considered a patriotic symbol in Japan. It is still officially used by the Japanese Navy and its symbolism appears in Japanese day-to-day life on Asahi Gold beer cans and the daily newspaper Asahi Shimbun (“The Morning Sun”), despite the atrocities committed by Imperial Japan in China, South Korea, and the United States.

And then there’s the famous, universally recognized symbol of communism, the interlocking Hammer and Sickle. Mention Russia and despite it being over 25 years since the fall of the Soviet Union, don’t be surprised when that symbol is mentioned a few minutes later. It’s near unavoidable, for better or for worse.

For seventy years, that unmistakable crimson banner was the symbol of my country of origin. Had I been born less than two years earlier, I would have been born in the USSR, not Russia. Indeed, my original passport does not say Russian Federation.

It says Союз Советских Социалистических Республик. Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The Stars and Bars has been convincingly argued to be a symbol of racism and white supremacy, whether intended or not. Obviously not everyone who flies that flag is a racist, but many, many racists fly that flag. It was clearly displayed by many during the infamous tiki torch march in Charlottesville. It is the same with the old orange-white-blue South African flag and the green and white flag of Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.

The Sickle and Hammer is a symbol of communism. Communism is not an inherently prejudiced ideology, but under its red banner, over 100 million people in China, the Soviet Union, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe were unjustly imprisoned, sentenced to cruel and unusual punishment, outright executed, or even victim to genocide in Cambodia and Ukraine.

The dynamic is a bit different than that of the Stars and Bars. The Confederacy attempted to break free of the United States. It failed. The Reds, however, succeeded in overthrowing the provisional government of Aleksandr Kerensky and won the Russian Civil War and with it control over all of what was the Soviet Union. When they won, the sickle and hammer flag ceased to be simply a symbol of a political ideology, but a country.

That symbol went on to be included in snapshots of great historical achievement. When Nazi Germany was defeated, Red Army soldiers flew the Sickle and Hammer over Berlin. Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova, the first man and woman to break free of Earth and visit the cosmos did so with "CCCP" proudly displayed on their helmets.

Therefore, it could be argued that there exists a limited space in which one could celebrate achievements of the Soviet peoples with that flag and symbol displayed.

It also comes down to timing. A Russian or a person with Russian heritage with pride in the achievements of his or her people may choose to display with restraint such symbolism on certain holidays such as on Victory Day or Cosmonauts’ Day, but in all other cases opt to display the white-blue-red flag used today.

It would also, without a doubt, be considered especially inappropriate in the presence of certain people and groups. Just as displaying the Stars and Bars to a black person or the Nazi swastika to a Jewish person would be unthinkably disrespectful, displaying the Soviet banner would be gravely disrespectful to display in the presence of citizens of the countries that were once unwilling satellites of the USSR. In the United States, many have responded to the display of the Stars and Bars with the slogan, “Stop pretending your racism is patriotism”. That slogan could be altered in the case of the Soviet banner as well, although perhaps not in a direct condemnation of racism. While communism was oftentimes mixed with ethnic and racial prejudices, the ideology, at least on paper, portrays itself as a force against such prejudice.


In Russia, most of the statues and symbols of communism were not destroyed. Some still stand in their original places, but many have been moved to museums to offer historical context and a space for debate. It is possible that a similar approach to Confederate symbols may be required. To erect a statue of a Confederate soldier in heroic likeness in a city square will almost certainly be considered inappropriate. To erect a statue of a Confederate General from the vantage point where he directed his troops on a Civil War battlefield or at a museum near that battlefield, while not completely without controversy, could be used in a more historical and informative perspective. Even Robert E. Lee, the most famous of Confederate generals, believed statues of his or his brothers in arms’ likenesses would keep old wounds open.  

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Playing with Fire: The Iraqi Kurdish Independence Referendum and its Consequences

On September 25th, 2017, Iraqi Kurdistan set in motion a regional referendum to decide on whether the region should secede from Iraq and become an independent state. 
The referendum was opposed by nearly every country in the Middle East, the lone exception being Israel. Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran were all especially vocal in their opposition, as each country has a large population of ethnic Kurds, all of which have flirted with the allure of establishing an independent and greater Kurdistan. 
Nevertheless, the Kurds went to the polls, and when the dust had cleared, a result overwhelmingly in favor of independence emerged. The turnout was claimed to be high at 72%, which translates to over three million voters. Of those, 92.7% voted for an independent Republic of Kurdistan. Kurds in all four countries erupted in celebration at the news. 
Before the ink on the official results could dry, however, tensions rose. Borders closed, ultimatums were given, joint military drills were held. Two days ago, the Iraqi Army marched northeast from their positions near the mostly Arab city of Hawija to the city of Kirkuk and captured the city as well as the airport and the air base near it. While there was some sporadic fighting, the city fell quickly and mostly peacefully. 
As the Iraqi Army rolled into the streets of Kirkuk, the Arab and Shia Turkmen populations rejoiced while the Kurds fell into dismay. Kirkuk is a multiethnic city, with large populations of all three ethnicities, and it is considered a cultural capital for Arabs, Kurds, and Turkmen alike. While not originally part of the established Kurdish Regional Government, Kirkuk City and large parts of Kirkuk Province were taken over by Kurdish Peshmerga troops as the predominantly Arab Iraqi Army retreated from an Islamic State offensive in 2014. This was a considerable point of pride for Kurds in Iraq, many of whom believe Kirkuk is a Kurdish city and should have been part of Kurdish-controlled territory since the regional authority was established after the American invasion.
Islamic State has endured a slow but sure decline since its original breakneck expansion and no longer controls territory where the border between Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan lies. Its territorial control in Iraq is today restricted to a few small cities in Western Iraq’s Anbar province and some open desert, and there is a considerable possibility the Iraqi Army will be launching an offensive to secure the border in full before the end of the year. 
As well as defeating ISIS for good, the Iraqi Army seems determined to march farther north into Kurdish-controlled territory and move towards the original borders of the Kurdish Region to the dismay of many Kurds living in those areas. There is considerable fear that this will lead Iraq into another civil war, only a few years after sectarian fighting allowed Islamic State to reach all the way to Baghdad’s suburbs. 
On October 17th, unconfirmed reports claimed that the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga would withdraw to the original borders of the three provinces set out for Iraqi Kurdistan in 2003. If this holds, the Kurdistan Regional Government will shrink considerably back to its original size. Evidence suggests that this agreement is being implemented. 

The possibility of independence, which was always going to be a difficult prospect even on the best day, seems to be fading. If the Peshmerga abides by their possible agreement to move back peacefully and Kurdish regions stay with Iraq, there could be major consequences for leaders in both Baghdad and Erbil. 

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi will likely see his popularity, already considerable, move even higher. The defeat of ISIS as a state and the mostly peaceful preservation of Iraq’s northern borders would cement him as a pivotal and effective leader. Whether he can translate that momentum into strengthening Iraq’s economy, battling corruption, keeping sectarian tensions low and rebuilding after the war against ISIS is yet to be seen, but it’s pretty likely that unless tensions bubble up again that Al-Abadi will at least be given a second chance when and if he runs for re-election. 

KRG President Masoud Barzani could possibly face considerable consequences in the opposite direction. If the Kurdish region does not go independent, Kurds will likely blame his government for not following through. 

Iraqi Kurdistan, doted on by many media outlets in the west because it is largely peaceful, free from sectarian violence, and generally more secular than the rest of Iraq, is still saturated with its own problems. The Peshmerga forces in charge of its defense often fight for one of the major political parties rather than the region at large, highlighting the region’s serious political polarization. Masoud Barzani, president since 2005, hasn’t faced re-election since 2009, and the region hasn’t gone to the polls to elect a new Parliament since 2011. Barzani has long been accused of being dictatorial and authoritarian in his rule, and those claims are not without merit.  The two major parties in Iraqi Kurdistan, the right-wing Kurdistan Democratic Party and the left-wing Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, fought a civil war between 1994 and 1997, less than 10 years after the Genocide of Al-Anfal, and their animosity remains present. 

Like any other people, the Kurds of Iraq deserve the right to decide their own fate, and even with the ethnic tensions in areas like Kirkuk, most Kurds in Iraq do seem to want independence. Kurds cheered the end of Saddam Hussein’s reign when the US invaded and remain quite pro-American in many cases. Kurds in both Syria and Iraq have been vital forces for good against the Islamic State-in fact, this article happened to be published on the day predominantly Kurdish forces defeated Islamic State in their de facto capital of Raqqa. A secular, democratic and independent Kurdistan could be a force for good in the Middle East if it was able to tactfully work out its relationship with Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria, and the possibility of a relationship between an independent Kurdish state with Israel could have been reason for hope. 

The Kurds’ desire for independence is not the problem, but the way the referendum came about left a lot to be desired. While there is an argument to be made that there’s never a really optimum time for a region to declare independence from a state which has ruled over them for a long period of time, Iraqi Kurdistan’s independence referendum happened at poorly decided time. It’s understandable that many Kurds were of the opinion “If not now, when?”, but there were serious regional issues. President Barzani seemed to use the independence referendum as a distraction above anything else. It allowed him to divert attention from the lack of free elections for nearly 6 years both for the executive and legislative branches of the government. It allowed a distraction from the region’s endemic corruption and inability to pay many workers. Even if Iraqi Kurdistan did go independent peacefully, the chances of it resolving its own internal problems as well as negotiating separation from Iraq would have been difficult even for an accountable democratic government. 

In the end, the Kurds in Iraq don’t look like they’ll be ruling over their own independent state in the immediate future. Independence was never going to be an easy struggle for this long-oppressed people, but a serious reshuffling of priorities before going ahead with the referendum may have made it a bit more feasible. It’s true that being surrounded by hostile neighbors backed up by international alliances didn’t help much (only Israel, a country widely mistrusted across the Middle East, was willing to go out on a limb and explicitly support the region’s desire for independence), but the rollout of this attempt was clumsy, ill-times, and collapsed quickly when pressure was applied.