Can the Northern Ireland Conflict and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflicts be compared?

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

George Santayana

While I was in Belfast attending a Model United Nations Conference, representing Pakistan, shortly before I flew home I went on a legendary Belfast Black Cab tour.  These tours which are often staffed by former paramilitary members from Northern Ireland (NI) The Troubles era are intimate tours of the city's infamous past (and sometimes present) trouble spots.  At the first stop on the tour was the Divis Flats, reportedly the sight of the first casualty of The Troubles in Belfast; a sleeping 8 year old boy killed by a stray police bullet.  While pondering at the irony that the first victim of The Troubles was an innocent person I noticed a Palestinian flag flying from one of the Flats’ windows.   My tour guide was largely dismissive of this when I asked about it, saying that person probably displayed it just because another Nationalist did.  Even more intriguingly, further into the tour I notice Israeli flags clearly on display in a Unionist era.

This experience led me to wonder; are these two conflicts in any way comparable?   In NI a body count threshold seemed to have been reached as well as a threshold of international concern to almost lock into place a peace process which at least seems durable.  And thus the 1998 Belfast Agreement and power sharing between the previously violently conflicting parties was signed.  This begs the question; could a similar process happen in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?

That both conflicts have deeply rooted historical backgrounds is not in doubt.  The oldest of those histories is undoubtedly that of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict since the Jewish Zionist movement, that forged the concept of a modern Jewish homeland in the region of Palestine, cites the Jews as a people as originating from this region.  This was well before the birth of Christ, vastly outdating the Norman landings on the island of Ireland and the Ulster Plantations being established in the north during the 1500s AD.  It is disputable how much of a difference this makes practically since the opposing sides of both disputes are as likely to mythologise events that happened 50 years ago as much as they would for ones happening 500 years ago.  But the past does not stay buried for long and both conflicts have historical baggage that will be very hard to clear up, if that is even possible at all.

For the sides of both conflicts nationalism is a very serious force, as is religion.  Religious differences trumped nationalistic ones in Ireland for many years since the formation of Irish nationalism is only really a concept that is at most a few centuries old, next to older religious identities.  Inter-communal violence has taken place in NI since at least the late 18th century when Protestant Peep-O-Day boys fought against the Catholic Defenders.  Zionism is the next youngest self-determination movement, having it’s roots in the late 19^th century.  Palestinian nationalism is even younger, coming to the fore with the rise of Arab nationalism during the post-war period.  It is arguable that nationalism, Zionist and Palestinian, merely hardened group identities and communal grievances rather than created them.  But now nationalism is present it may be hard if not impossible to put the genie back in it’s bottle in both cases.

There are intriguing similarities and differences between the opposing factions in the different conflicts.  While the Unionist governed province of the UK, NI, recognised the existence of the Republic of Ireland (and the Free State before that), much of the Irish Civil War was fought over the acceptance in the majority Catholic south about the NI's right to exist as a separate political entity.  There is a similarity to the widespread Palestinian rejection of the 1947 UN partition plan to divide Palestine up into two states, although the rejection seemed more widespread in the Palestinian case.  Differences in culture, historical background or the leadership of the Palestinian’s with the highly structured and recognised leadership of the First Dail may account for the difference, although this is far from certain.

It is worth noting that while the most prominent Palestinian political groups have been founded on the principle of armed action against Israel, starting with Fatah who formed with this specific objective in mind, nationalism in Northern Ireland has taken on two recognised moulds: Constitutional Nationalism and militant republicanism.  Constitutional Nationalism in NI seeks to improve the rights of ordinary Catholic nationalists while the majority of them push for a united Ireland, all by peaceful means.  Militant Irish Republicanism stands for pushing for a united Ireland, the perceived ultimate guarantor of Catholic rights, by any means including armed struggle.

What is interesting is that while a militant Palestinian nationalist tradition is clearly visible, it would seem that a Palestinian Constitutional Nationalism is largely absent.  In many ways this is what Fatah has become by default as the Islamist militant party and militia Hamas has stolen their thunder as the standard bearer of militant nationalism.  Unlike the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) in NI which grew out from the Catholic civil rights movement, the SDLP was born in tradition, while Fatah merely found it’s way there by circumstance, in many ways much like the former militant Sinn Fein party.

The Protestant Unionist and the largely Jewish population of Israel in many ways have similarities.  The main difference is though that as bad as inter-communal violence got during The Troubles, there was hardly ever an intention to wipe out Protestants in NI as a people.  While the IRA directly called for the overthrow of the NI  State, their propaganda never reached the blood curdling proportions of Hamas who look favourably on the Holocaust and the wholesale killing of Jewish civilians.  By contrast recent evidence has revealed that while the IRA too often practiced sectarian killing, they eschewed it where they could to minimise their potential supporters becoming upset.  However in the heat of battle these differences can look academic.  There are some striking similarities between the siege mentalities of both the Israelis and the Unionists.  In many ways the former was more justified since they faced national armies challenging their existence.  At the height of The Troubles the Irish Government authorised the planning of Exercise Armageddon as an emergency measure to protect Nationalists, but this was never implemented and only conceived as a measure to protect Nationalists.  Because of this no other state forces entered this conflict apart from the UK’s.

Not all conflicts have a singular silver bullet, especially when it comes to the conflicts discussed.  When I asked an Israeli friend of mine about their opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he was pessimistic that a solution would be found soon and cited a difference of narratives on both sides.  This is the ultimate link between the two conflicts.  Neither side can wholly connect with the other, in the context of both conflicts.  In NI recognition, albeit begrudging, between the two sides and their narratives have been established.  This was one of the main issues that made the difference between the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement failing and the 1998 Belfast Agreement succeeding (just).

Putting aside the different scales in the different scenarios the one thing the NI Nationalists had going in their favour more than the Palestinians was an articulate but determined Constitutional Nationalist movement that won praise by championing the promotion of civil rights over armed struggle while practising a degree of empathy with their opposite numbers.  As long as Fatah and Hamas are in a competition to look the most defiant against Israel , as oppose to looking for a long term peace, the killing will surely continue.

The Future of British Foreign Policy in Africa

“Africa was not created piecemeal.  Africa was born no later and no earlier than any other geographical area on this globe.  Africans no more, no more and no less than other men, possess all human attributes, talents, deficiencies, virtues and faults”.

Former King of Ethiopia Haille Selassie

Why should the British Government and it’s people have an interest in having anything to do with Africa?  Not half a century ago decolonisation was accelerating, relinquishing large areas of Africa from British colonial control in an effort to balance the books of an unruly economy back at home.  Our foreign policy usually centres around two axis, that of security and prosperity.  In terms of the former parts of Africa continues to be a concern.  Jihadist groups have proliferated in North, West and the Horn of Africa with groups like Boko Haram and Al-Shabab becoming a part of a loose nexus of such groups in Africa.  In the wake of Libyan leader Colonel Gadaffi’s demise Libya has become a land of warring militias and refugees who are struggling to get the Europe, while the Islamic State announces it’s sinister presence in the country.  Prosperity wise there are interesting opportunities.  In recent years over 10 of the fastest growing economies of the world have been African.  African economies are evolving, albeit in an uneven way across the continent, with some of them becoming more Service Sector orientated closer to our country’s model.  However various structural deficiencies in the African economies limit their growth, providing a possible opportunity for Britain to play a constructive role.  In the mean-time regional trends hint at new opportunities as well as dangers.

While our footprint in Africa seems to be quite modest, other nations seem to have much more grand designs for the continent.  Our neighbour France has long been intimately been closely involved in Africa.  France has not always been on the right side of history in terms of it’s involvement on the continent, leading to accusations of necolonialism which had merit at least half of the time.  While France still has ulterior motives such as promoting exports from it’s arms industries in recent years it has taken more of a positive role on the continent.  On 1^st August 2014 France initiated Operation Barkhane; a 3,000 strong military deployment in it’s former West African colonies including Mali, Chad and Burkina Faso.   This was a follow up to Operation Serval, the French intervention in Mali against a separatist and Islamist insurgent takeover of that country.  The US meanwhile under the United States Africa Command has carried out missions on the continent such as drone strikes in Somalia and Special Forces raids against IS in Libya to keep Jihadists at bay.  Meanwhile US aid efforts have ambitiously taken aim at one of Africa’s biggest economic problems, lack of power generation capability.

However the big story of great power involvement in Africa in the past 10 years has been that from China.  China’s energy hungry economy has had much to gain from extensive economic links with a continent brimming with minerals.  Chinese construction and infrastructure companies have also penetrated a market desperate for development in both fields.  Research by Foreign Policy magazine has shown that the Chinese are making serious efforts to invest in skills and training in African workforces, suggesting that their interest in the continent is long term.  The Chinese Government has also announced plans to construct a military base in Djibouti, a country already crowded by foreign military base.  Many Africans and Western powers alike are unsure about China’s interests on the continent.  Since China is run by an authoritarian government it stands to reason that it has very little interest in fostering civil society in Africa, the roots of sustainable democracies.  African civil organisations in the past few years have stood against Chinese property developments that they have eyed with suspicion, showing the potential flowering of African democracy to come.

The past year has seen attitudes to liberal ideas heavily challenged.  Some Presidents of African countries such as Paul Kagame of Rwanda have sidestepped constitutional term limits with little consequence.  In Burkina Faso the former President Blaise Campaore was ousted from power when he tried the same trick.  The President of Burundi, a country long plagued by ethnic violence, threatens to plunge his country into bloody chaos over his plans to remain in power.  At the top of the African Union (AU) the megalomaniac President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is chairman.  With his encouragement African Governments, including South Africa, are pushing for AU countries to leave the International Criminal Court (ICC) in preference for an AU run court.  Considering that most of these governments have made it clear that in principle they do not want international courts to put serving African leaders on trial, it is obvious that their commitment to a liberal vision of Africa is questionable at best.

Africa is currently faced by many economic challenges.  These can broadly be presented as three main problems; a lack of infrastructure, underdeveloped agriculture and the collapse in oil prices.  A lack in infrastructure hampers everything.  A lack of schools hampers training skilled workforces. A lack of railways and roads means that goods cannot be supplied to markets and security forces cannot respond to emergencies quickly, such as the Boko Haram one.  Shortages of electricity keep African economies moving at a snails pace in a super-connected and energised global economy.  African agriculture has great potential.  That sector used to make much of the continent a breadbasket until state control, war and strife squandered this.  But African agriculture needs technology transfers, skill transfers and a genuine global commitment to free trade.  European Union (EU) and American subsidies stand in the way of the latter.  Many of Africa’s fastest growing economies in recent years are major oil producers.  The collapse in oil price, which has much to do with China’s slowing economy, has hammered the finances of many of these countries.  These economies need to diversify if they are to avoid being vulnerable to further oil price shocks.  Helping to solve this dilemma is something that the British Government should set it’s mind to.

Britain should have a long term strategic interest in Africa.  The economic opportunities are massive.  Britain’s engineering expertise can help tie African countries together with infrastructure projects.  These projects should be geared towards inter-African trade, which remains shockingly underdeveloped, as well as trade for further abroad.  Britain also has an opportunity to help tackle the problem of Africa’s power supply problem, with the assistance of it’s world class university research capacity as private sector expertise.  In the former the University of the West of England has started on an interesting project to use human urine as a power source.

In terms of the illiberal turn on the African continent Britain can turn to reforming the Commonwealth to make it more trade orientated and an organisation that promotes liberal values.  If the Brexit from the EU occurs organisations such as the Commonwealth may take on a new importance and meaning.  if it remains in the EU then the UK should push for the reform of EU agricultural subsidies, so African produce can enter world markets on fair terms and ultimately reduce food prices for all. Opportunities for increasing links between our Service Sector and their young African equivalents should also be explored. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development may also want to consider having greater involvement in civil society schemes, much like how the US State Department does which trains local democracy activists.

New IRA? Old Problems?

“Let us not waste our energies brooding over the more we might have got.  Let us look upon what it is we have got.”

Michael Collins, Irish Independence leader speaking about the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty

Irish Nationalism as an ideology has always been about it’s followers having to face divisions between their high hopes and political reality.  Michael Collins, the Irish Republican and independence leader was the first to confront this dilemma and was ultimately killed by it.  He argued that accepting the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, while it fell short of the outright independence and Irish unity that he and his compatriots had fought for, was a foundation for greater freedom to be achieved.  It was ironically his main opponent in the Irish Civil War, Eamon De Valera, who after Collins’ death proved him right by taking back the treaty ports leased to the British by diplomacy and made the Irish Free State a republic by constitutional change.  But the Republic of Ireland and it’s leaders came to the eventual, if reluctant, realisation that complete Irish unity between the north and south was a long way off to being achieved.

Much like the time during the time of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, when the 1998 Belfast Agreement  was signed and ratified many Irish Republicans consented to the will of democratic process and laid down their arms.  However a minority chose to fight on with the aim of uniting the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland with the 6 of Northern Ireland, despite the Irish Constitution under the terms of the Belfast Agreement disavowing territorial claims to the north.  These rebels against the Belfast Agreement are known as “dissident” republicans and carry on their paramilitary activity to this day.

For much of Northern Ireland’s post-Belfast Agreement history paramilitary activity behind the scenes in the province had been simmering behind the scenes, but nowhere near the levels of the horrors of The Troubles period.  Unionist suspicion of Sinn Fein and their alleged links to paramilitary groups remained, but the party nevertheless consistently and vocally denounced instances of such activity when they broke out into open violence.  However changes in the fortunes and politics of dissident republicans means that the British Home Office has recently taken the position of publicly acknowledging them as more of a threat to national security.

On the week ending the 9^th May the Home Office publicly declared that the threat from a possible dissident republican terrorist attack has increased from “moderate” to “substantial”.  This is largely because of the emergence in recent years of a dissident republican group popularly known as the” New IRA”.  The New IRA was formed in July 2012 as a new group consisting of elements from Republican Action Against Drugs (RAAD), the Real IRA and other miscellaneous dissident-minded individuals.  The former is a vigilante group whose professed mission of violently opposing drug dealers hails from a tradition started in the “Free Derry” era of The Troubles.  This new alignment of dissident groups only leaves the Continuity IRA as the only major organised dissident entity left, although commentators say this group is in decline due to it being riddled with informers.

The New IRA is thought to have a strong presence in West Belfast and Derry  but also operates in areas such as Tyrone, mid-Ulster and Fermanagh.  It’s leadership includes a former member of the East Tyrone Provisional IRA, an area infamously known by the British Army “Bandit Country”.  The groups attacks centre on gun and bomb attacks.  The latter was instigated in March against a prison officer Adrian Ismay who was killed by a car bomb.  This is a chilling reminder of some of the worst days of The Troubles when in revenge for authorities defying Provisional IRA hunger strikers, the group targeted prison officers and brutally murdered them.  An increase in paramilitary style assaults, by republicans and loyalists have been increasingly evident in the news in Northern Ireland in recent months.  One of the New IRA’s gruesome calling cards is the “Six-pack”, the shooting of joints in the arms and legs.  According to statistics from the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), 52 bomb attacks across Northern Ireland in the past 12 months compared with 36 the previous year.

The British security services believe that what makes the New IRA especially dangerous in addition to their willingness to use violence is their arsenal.  These services believe that the IRA has managed to acquire approximately a quarter of a ton of Semtex which is a plastic explosive originally manufactured in former Czechoslovakia during the Cold War.  This stock was sent to the Provisional IRA by the late former leader of Libya Muammar Gaddafi in his efforts to destabilise the West through his sponsorship of various terror groups.  Semtex was originally used as a so called “booster” by the Provisional IRA to set off larger chemical-fertiliser bombs such as the devastating bomb detonated in the London Docklands in the 1990s.  The location of this particular stash of explosives, which was hidden in County Cavan in the Republic of Ireland, was unknown to the Provisional IRA group that participated in the arms decommissioning, but known to a man who became a dissident republican and eventually joined the IRA.  The security services also worry that former Provisional IRA men, who are members of the New IRA, may use their engineering expertise to somehow use the Semtex to make armour-piercing weapons, which in all likelihood may make the group more willing to take the fight directly to the security services themselves, in addition to softer civilian targets.

What can be done?  For a start the UK Government can act on the recommendations of the former governor of Hong Kong Chris Patten who called for the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) to be increased from it’s current standing force of 6,500 to have 600 more additional officers.  At the same time a careful eye will have to be kept on public perceptions about the force, to avoid the poisonous public relations that surrounded it’s predecessor the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).  Sinn Fein denials about the links between many of it’s member and past paramilitary activity is playing fast and loose with the truth to the extreme.  And yet the Unionists must resist the temptation to use the party as a political punch back when it should instead welcome it’s condemnations of dissident republican activity.  As former supporters of the armed struggle, their calls for peace are all the more meaningful, and the Unionists should seek to encourage them to hold to their commitments as oppose to goading them.  It also has to be said that the Unionists have to eat some humble pie since while they wax lyrical about the failure of republican paramilitaries to disarm, a recent UK Parliamentary report clearly cites the Loyalist paramilitaries as a least as well armed as their opposite numbers.

The people and politicians should take their advice from the Torah; “living well is the best revenge”.  If a stable and prosperous Northern Ireland is built in spite of the dangers then that will be the ultimate victory over terrorism.  It also has to be remembered that as bad as dissident republicans are, the group most likely to attack the UK is still the Islamic State.  That challenge ultimately will require a deeper commitment of resources and determination to overcome.

The Changing Face of Organised Crime in the United States

“You can get more with a nice word and a gun than you can with a kind word.”

Al Capone

The American Dream is the popular American myth that any American who works hard will be assured of great rewards for their labour.  However not all elements of American society have chosen to pursue that dream by legitimate means.  Organised Crime in America has changed and evolved with societal changes that have touched the nation, from the early waves of European migration to the banning of illegal drugs.  Even war and the 1960s counter culture has left it’s mark on the mosaic that is Organised Crime in the United States (US).

The Italian-American Mafia, in particular of the Sicilian migrant origin, is perhaps the most popularly known type of Organised Crime syndicate in the US.  It’s power and ability to terrorise has been played out in popular films such as “The Godfather” and “Goodfellas”.  This form of Organised Crime cam very closed to being strangled at birth.  The Black Hand extortion rackets and other Italian-American gangs would of likely died away thanks to improvements in policing, was it not for one of the biggest political mistakes in US political history.  That mistake was the passing of the Volstead Act which came into effect in 1920, enforcing the 18^th Amendment to the US Constitution that banned the sale and distribution of alcohol.

Prohibition was like a shot of adrenaline to the dying heart of Italian-American organised crime and the wider criminal underworld.  All of a sudden a huge and popular illegal market was established.  Alcohol was mainly either imported over the US’s giant coastlines and land borders.  In addition alcohol was often distilled domestically, often using suspect ingredients such as formaldehyde in order to provide crude flavouring to products.  The Sicilian based Mafias known as the Cosa Nostra (our world/thing) proved to have the rigid organised structures, discipline and ruthlessness to take the most advantage of this market.

This success inevitably brought renewed interest from Salvatore Maranzano, the most powerful Mafia figure from Sicily who waged the 1930-1931 Castellamerese War in order to assert Sicilian control over all Italian-American Mafia operations by defeating New York kingpin Joe Masseria.  Maranzano won, in no small part due to Charlie “Lucky” Luciano betraying his boss Joe Masseria at a dramatic showdown on Coney Island.  Before long Luciano felt Masseria outgrew his usefulness and hired Jewish gunmen to gun him down.

After coming out of top over his boss Luciano brought about a new order for the Cosa Nostra which survives to this day.  The families in New York were organised into Five Families (Genovese, Gambino, Bonano, Lucchese and Colombo) who today have manpower of between roughly 1,500-3000 in each family.  The Commission was founded to oversee the operations of the National Crime Syndicate, an organisation accompanying the Five Families and other recognised criminal enterprises.  Luciano, having long worked with his Jewish associate Meyer Lansky rejected the narrow racism of the “Moustache Pete’s” generation of the recently deceased bosses in favour of cooperation across the races where possible for profitable business.

American popular culture has long made much of the lone motorcyclist or “biker” as a solitary misfit dedicated to the open road in films such as “The Wild One” and “Easy Rider”.  Such figures began to be seen in gangs more and more after World War Two.  The appearance of these drifter-like men after the war is no coincidence and the war veteran backbone of the first American Motorcycle clubs was reinforced by the arrival of veterans from the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s.  Many of these men found it hard or undesirable to fit into regular civilian life, opting for the rough and ready biker life known throughout this culture as simply “the life”.  The most well-known biker gang is the Hell’s Angels club founded in 1948.  After that time biker gangs proliferated.  They were at first treated as a kind of curiosity of 1960s counterculture.  But soon things turned sinister.

The promotion of the rough and ready "life" combined with club members needs to earn a living inevitably led to their involvement in crime as many, though not all, Motorcycle clubs became Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs (OMC’s).  OMC’s have been documented as being involved in kidnapping, drug running, contract killing and many other crimes.  OMC’s have often committed crimes on behalf of older organised crime movements such as the Cosa Nostra.  The OMC violent subculture has even spread to the club’s international "Chapters", including an episode in Scandinavia where munitions from a government armoury was used.  These days OMC’s typically adopt a structure that includes a chain of command that includes a President, Vice President, Treasurer and a Sargent-at-arms.  The US Department of Justice still recognises OMC’s as an ongoing organised crime challenge.

Illegal drugs have supercharged organised crime activity and competition to a point where there is essentially a second Prohibition era.  The Cosa Nostra have been split by the conflict between their old world traditions and their ambitions for power on the issue of drugs.  Some Mafia families chose drugs as a lucrative earner and a way to beat the competition, while others stayed away eyeing the ever harsher drug laws being voted in.  The same drug trafficking routes for Marijuana markets via the Caribbean to Miami were soon used to fuel a Cocaine market, then a Crack Cocaine market.  The Colombian cartels dominated this trade during the 1980s and much of the 1990s with the Medellin and then the Cali cartels posing as significant adversaries to US Law Enforcement.  The fall of the Colombian cartels and the heavy patrolling of the Caribbean route led to the drug market simply adapting.  A Mexican route was established through the border while Mexican drug cartels began to establish major drug distributing routes through the US-Mexican border.

All organised crime is in some way financed by certain groups breaking the law to give people what they want, be it gambling, sex (by prostitution) or drugs.  Recent studies have proven that the US’s private healthcare system has exacerbated a mid-west heroin epidemic by unscrupulous doctors too readily prescribing opiates, leaving their patients curious about illegal markets in similar products.  The US has a drug problem, as evidenced by the rise of the Mexican cartels financed by American addicts (and ironically armed with Americans arms). The US Justice system also needs an overhaul.  Quite simply the system of elected judges and District Attorney’s (DA’s) has ruined the system’s chances of tackling the root causes of any crime let alone organised crime.  DA’s who are often ambitious for a political career like to make their bones looking tough by locking up minor offenders for unnecessarily long amounts of time.  This leaves them prey to the last and perhaps most insidious form of Organised Crime in the US.

Prison gangs proliferate as the US prison population proliferates.  The US prison population has increased exponentially from the mid-1990s onwards and has stopped long after the Crack Epidemic it was a response too.   In need of protection many new inmates join gangs often in order to stay alive.  The white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood started off as a prison gang to defend white prisoners.  La Eme and La Familia are Latino prison gangs that like the Brotherhood have grown massive outside criminal interests.  If the issue of US prison overpopulation is not tackled then US prisons will cease to become institutes of reform and become little better than crime colleges.