More on Darfur

Anyone wishing to get more into the Darfur situation might want to check out this from the Council on Foreign Relations. Particularly interesting are the video clips in part 1 (The Grim Reality) and part 5 (The Untested Doctrine).

The Grim Reality demonstrates the human side of the conflict, which often gets lost as disputes over how many hundreds of thousand have been killed turn suffering into a statistics exercise. In The Untested Doctrine, Lee Feinstein persuasively argues in favour of action in Darfur on the part of the International Community, regardless of whether the UN gets round to approving this.

***AND the UN has just approved a 26,000-strong joint UN-AU force to be deployed before 1 January 2008 (BBC)***

Darfur and the Genocide Olympics

Whilst it can never really be claimed that Africa is ‘in the news’, as summer kicks in and news elsewhere hits a dry patch, the Dark Continent has been cropping up on page 27 below the Renault ad with a slightly higher frequency than usual.

El País, which by an uncanny coincidence has exactly the same number of Africa correspondents as Planet Churro, reports that Spain will be contributing to a UN-mandated EU mission in Chad to help with refugees from over the border in strife-torn Darfur. At the moment this will be logistical and air support rather than men on the ground - as with 3,000 soldiers deployed in Afghanistan, Lebanon and the Balkans, Spanish forces have hit their limit for overseas operations – but Spanish sources have admitted that they may give in to a bit of Gallic arm-twisting and send ground forces in if new-mate Sarkozy’s France leads the operation.

This is likely to lead into the joint African Union-UN force to be deployed in Darfur itself sometime early next year. The Sudanese government, which backs and arms the Janjaweed militia – made up of nomadic Arabic-speaking Muslims and repsonsible for killing around 450,000 (mainly civilian) sedentary non-Arab Muslim tribes in land disputes -, has agreed to the deployment of the joint AU-UN forces, though there are niggles about how African these forces should be. 

Another boost for Africa could come from Camp David as George Bush and Gordon Brown break the bread. Hard-faced Gordon, who wouldn’t surprise anyone if he came out and said that he put himself through two hours of self-flagellation and a cold bath every time he gave into the temptation to eat an extra shortbread, doesn’t seem like a natural drinkng buddy for laid-back, good ole boy Bush (yes, George, we know, you don’t do that any more). But Brown did manage to look as if he was having fun when Dubbya took him for a  high-speed spin in the golf buggy and the Scot has expressed his admiration for American spirit, so they might be able to rub along together in an unconventional sort of way. Darfur is apparently on the agenda and the word is that they will be pressing for a new UN resolution on the matter.   

A traditional stumbling block in the past has been China, which buys 80% of Sudan’s oil and supplies arms and infrastructure to the east-African State with no questions asked. China has backed up its trading partner in the UN when resolutions on Darfur have come up in the past, but with the threat of the 2008 olympics being labelled the ‘Genocide Olympics’ and China’s coming out to the world not being quite the love-in that Communist Party bigwigs are hoping for, the Asian giant has shifted its stance and voted in favour of an increased UN presence in Darfur and put pressure on Sudan to resolve the conflict. 

Feet-dragging by Khartoum and an ineffective mandate for the UN forces could scupper the whole intitiative, but that something is going on has to be seen as hopeful. 

 ***worth checking out this for background info on Darfur***

The Miguel and Tony show

In an interview in today’s El País, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, Spain’s Foreign Affairs Minister and ex-EU Envoy to the Middle-East, has reaffirmed his confidence in Tony Blair’s ability to get the job done in the Middle East before January 2009 in his role as the envoy of the Quartet in the region. Whilst to some the bluffness of this statement might seem a bit like saying “I reckon my cat’s going to have a crap next Thursday at 11.35,” Moratinos has total faith in Blair, who is “enormously respected by those around Mahmoud Abbas [President of the Palestine Authority and leader of the secular al-Fatah party, currently in control of the West Bank], as well as by Israel and America.” “Ahem”, I hear you say, “so that’ll be the same America that has so much respect for Blair that it treated him like a slightly doddery relative throughout the Iraq invasion.” Well, yes and no.

Tony the tiger

Though Moratinos has dressed his unwavering support for Tony up in vague ideas about the man’s determination rather than getting into specific details, there are theories doing the rounds that Tony will undergo a Supermanesque transformation from Bush’s diffident poodle into a roaring (well, you get the drift) tiger.  

Firstly, Blair is no longer responsible for upholding the special relationship between the US and Britain (roughly translated as “stay on side or else we’ll fuck you over like we did at Suez”), so he’ll have more room for manoeuvre; and connected to this, he’ll also, at least in theory, be representing the interests of the other three members of the Quartet (EU, Russia and the UN). None of the other members of the Quartet has to deal with an Israeli lobby internally, though neither do they hold anwhere near as much sway with Israel as the US does. Secondly, having made a dog’s arse of things in Iraq, the US commitment to single-handedly changing the world for the better has waned and it realises that without a reasonable level of international support its initiatives lack credibility, so Blair might get beyond the flying-jacketed backslapping he achieved with Bush over Iraq (possibly getting the US to tweak the screws on Israel, to which it donates 3$bn a year).  

Blair also has the advantage of being a big-hitter on the international scene, and can get easy access to the right people and kick up a fuss if things don’t stay on course, and his tenacity in getting a solution for Northern Ireland adds to his credentials.    

Playing hard to get with Hamas

Whilst it all sounds fairly rosy so far, pretending Hamas (the hard-line majority party in the Palestinian Parliament, and currently in control of the Gaza Strip) doesn’t really exist is likely to put a spoke in the works, as refusing to deal with Palestine’s other head is going to doom any solution to failure, and the economic strangulation of the Gaza Strip is only likely to radicalise its supporters. The old Cold-War tactic of economically propping up friends (Abbas’s West Bank) so as to get Hamas supporters to turn against their party in Gaza may work, but there again, it might not.

Israel

And then there are the Israelis. There is widespread popular support for an end to violence rather than victory, especially after the damage the country experienced from Hezbollah and Palestine last summer, but the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) works on narrow electoral margins and coalition-forming, more often than not with the kingmakers from the radical right. The recent appointment of Shimon Peres in the largely symbolic role of President is a positive sign, but loyalties shift very quickly in Israeli politics, especially when peace deals are in the offing. A solution with Abbas would be palatable for many Israelis, but the armed forces will continue provoking Hamas, which has so far been unwilling to accept the existence of Israel, in order to justify more incursions into Gaza and thus prolong the downward spiral of violence.

Solana out in the cold

The affable but somewhat ineffective Javier Solana – EU High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy – is yet again being left on the sidelines. Firstly cast out of the limelight by Blair’s appointment and then kneed in the groin by his countryman Moratinos’ support for Blair’s role, Solana has been damning the project with exceedingly faint praise. 

Whilst Moratinos’ brimming optimism is a good sign, a solution before 2009 is not the sort of thing you’d want to bet your house on, and without   some sort of initiative for sorting out the Hamas situation, the conference being touted for September in New York is unlikely to get much done in terms of a long-term solution.

  

It looks like a Churro, Jim

The good news for anyone whose life has been inexplicably empty since Planet Churro stopped bleeping away in the outer reaches of the Universe is that, with more time on my hands and a childish urge to get the rise out of my fellow internauts, I intend to get the site up and running again. As soon as I can be arsed, that is. The bad news for regular churristas and my faithful band of veiny-necked anti-churristas is that the site is going to be taking a new direction.

Catalan nationalism is on the back foot and, as the most anti-nationalist bloke I know, I’m even beginning to piss myself off with my ranting on the injustices of the (gently fading) nationalist hegemony. So the slick-suited smothies from CiU and the barber-dodging time-warp survivors of ERC can rest easy knowing that they won’t be on the wrong end of a keyboard lashing from this part of space (last insults, boys, I promise…).

Dragging myself out of parochialism, the old-look new-outlook site will be taking a sideways glance (mmmm, very radical-sounding, I know) at the wider world with a tinge of Spain thrown in. With its highly pro-institutionalist approach, Spain is starting to carve out something of a niche for itself on the international scene, especially within the EU, and the aim is to reflect on and analyse this in the site.

So stand by for lots of half-baked ideas and crass misunderstandings as I zap down and spout off about subjects on which I really should know better than to start letting my itchy keyboard finger get the better of me on.

As always, if you fancy beaming comments up to Churro, feel free. All comments will be published in their entirety and, where necessary, cordially responded to, except the ones that make me look like a twat, obviously. 

So, strap yourselves in for what could be a rocky landing.

Mislabelled

Josep-Lluís Carod-Rovira, vice-president of Catalonia and leader of the left-leaning nationalist ERC party, has unveiled his plans for promoting the “social use of Catalan”; wrapped up in vague statements about “great national agreements”, apparently it’s just a case of stepping up the Generalitat’s policy on only purchasing from suppliers who label their products in Catalan, as this will encourage labelling in Catalan (or justify a policy of using public money to exclusively purchase from Catalan-labelling mates). 

For all his faults, Carod is more aware of the reality of Catalonia than many other nationalist politicians and is reasonably on the case in much of his analysis, though he often lets himself down in subsequent policy ideas. But quite how he expects to make the quantum leap from labelling in Catalan to its social use is a tad intriguing. Does he expect people to go down their local and start yapping away in labelling jargon? Does labelling play a more influential role in shaping personal behaviour than I, in my protected little world, realise? Would taking a few old cereal boxes and baked-bean-tin labels into my English classes stop students from reverting to Catalan and Spanish as soon as they got down the bar afterwards?  

So it looks like we’ll be getting more of the same: more obligations and the sinister threat of a visit from the language police, rather than a more engaging linguistic policy which brings Catalan closer to the people who feel alienated by it. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone, least of all Josep-Lluís, that people might be more predisposed to Catalan if it wasn’t used as a political tool to deny them opportunities. As always, nice work, Josep-Lluís.

Planet Churro shoots off the screen

Due to pressures relating to work and study, Planet Churro will be lost in outer orbit for a while. Hopefully it’ll be back in action with its familiar brand of whingeing and low blows after Christmas some time. 

Flying’s not a nationalist issue

One of the principal nationalist gripes in Catalonia is the way that centralised control of Spain’s airport network is holding back Barcelona’s El Prat airport and driving away foreign investment. Yet more nationalist whinging, you might say, and you’d be right, but is there any reason why the nationalist devil should get all the best economic issues?

Last week’s edition of 30 Minuts on TV3 (Catalonia’s very own Nodo) dealt with the airport issue and, despite the usual slightly misrepresentative imagery (a businessman returning to Barcelona from Sydney was tired because there were no direct flights…), it does seem to be the case that the system isn’t really working. Barcelona has only one year-round transcontinental flight and business organisations are clamouring for more; Barajas (Madrid) receives 57% of funding yet only accounts for 22% of flights.

Germà Bel, a University of Barcelona lecturer who was interviewed for the programme, does not appear to be in any way nationalist (in the past he has campaigned for a less confrontational relationship between Catalonia and Madrid and believes Catalonia should be a region within Spain) and is not even asking for any more money to be given from Madrid. All he wants is decentralised and/or private management (possibly through some sort of consortium arrangement or possibly a fully private organisation), as airports can generate their own funds and competition between them would be beneficial and would prevent a misallocation of funds. Of course, sometimes centralised planning works effectively and sometimes it doesn’t, and to view free-market competition and privatisation as a panacea would be naive (it can lead to unnecessary duplication and benefits going to shareholders rather than users and employees), but anyone who has travelled from El Prat recently will tell you that something needs to change.

Wanting economic growth, as long as no one else is denied a piece of the cake as a result and the benefits are not exclusively dished out amongst your mates, has nothing to do with nationalism, so maybe the new anti-nationalist Ciutadans party could get on the bandwagon with this cause. They would thereby be able to demonstrate that they do want the best for Catalonia, its businesses and its people, spelling out in the process that they simply believe that nationalism is the not the way to go about this (the nationalist business model, with its emphasis on small firms staying small and a lack of investment in infrastructure has clearly not functioned). It should be stressed that, in the case of a transfer of powers to the Generalitat, airport management should be in the hands of a business-led consortium on which there would be some representation from government bodies and that we would not, hopefully, be ending up with the ’Rafael Casanovas Airport’ staffed entirely by incompetents who’ve passed the necessary linguistic-identity tests.

The boys from Ciutadans will have their work cut out convincing the media they are anything other than baby-snatching fifth-columnists, but they do need to pad out their political rhetoric. On Friday evening’s TV3 news, the singing of Els Segadors at the opening of Parlament was shown on the headlines and the cameras zoomed straight in on the face of an impassive Albert Rivera for about 3 seconds as the new parliamentarian resolutely refused to get involved in the knees-up; the first parliamentary intervention in Spanish is likely to see news director Lluís Caelles go into full apoplexy.