Bulletins and News Discussion from August 7th to August 13th, 2023 - White Blows From A Black Hand
Image is of the American military during their occupation of Haiti at the beginning of the 20th century, taken from this NYT article from 2022: Invade Haiti, Wall Street Urged. The U.S. Obliged.
In the aftermath of the assassination of Jovenel Moïse in 2021 and his replacement by Western comprador Ariel Henry, the situation in Haiti is the most dire it has been in decades - by some metrics, even worse than the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake (CW: rape, violence including against children). Millions do not have enough food. Outbreaks of disease are rampant. The government - such that it still exists, which is becoming increasingly debatable - has only a minority control over the capital city, with some estimates putting the influence of armed groups at 80%.
America's search for somebody, anybody, to intervene in Haiti has ended, with Kenya answering the call. President Ruto has announced that he will send 1000 police officers to Haiti. Kenya's Foreign Minister has tried to sell this intervention as pan-Africanism. Other Caribbean states, like the Bahamas and Antigua and Barbuda, have offered to send police officers too.
I can't really say it any better than the Black Alliance for Peace's own statement:
Kenya has offered to deploy a contingent of 1,000 police officers to help train and assist Haitian police, ostensibly to “restore order” in the Caribbean republic. Yet, their proposal is nothing more than military occupation by another name; an occupation of Haiti by an African country is not Pan-Africanism, but Western imperialism in Black face. By agreeing to send troops into Haiti, the Kenyan government is assisting in undermining the sovereignty and self-determination of Haitian people, while serving the neocolonial interests of the United States, the Core Group, and the United Nations.
There is an urgent need for clarity on the issue of occupation in Haiti. As described in a recent statement on Haiti and Colonialism, Haiti is under ongoing occupation. No call for foreign intervention into Haiti from the administration of appointed Prime Minister Ariel Henry can be considered legitimate, because the Henry administration itself is illegitimate. BAP has repeatedly pointed out that Haiti’s crisis is a crisis of imperialism. Haiti’s current unpopular and unelected government is propped up only by Haiti’s de facto imperial rulers: the unseemly confederacy of the Core Group countries and organizations, as well as BINUH (the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti), and a loose alliance of foreign corporations and local elites.
Henry and the UN have made a mockery of sovereignty by mouthing the slogan “Haitian solutions to Haitian problems,” yet finding the only solution in violence through foreign military intervention. After repeated failed attempts to organize an occupying force to protect their interests and impose their will on the Haitian people (including appeals to the multinational organization, the Caribbean Community [CARICOM] for troops), they have now found a willing accomplice in Kenya, an east African country with its own set of internal problems.
Indeed, what’s in it for Kenya? An opportunity to both train and enhance the salaries of local police forces and garner a patina of prestige, or at least bootlicking approval, from the West. And for Haiti? White blows from a Black hand and a further erosion of their sovereignty.
And, by the way, here's the Black Alliance for Peace's statement calling for no intervention by ECOWAS in Niger, calling the organization a Western comprador organization similar to CARICOM's role in Haiti.
Welcome to our friends throughout the Lemmyverse!
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
Armenia has requested an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council due to the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh as a result of the blockade of the Lachin corridor, the press service of the Armenian Foreign Ministry reported on Saturday.
My concern with another, more serious N-K war is that so many different players are on one side or the other. Israel is a huge backer of Azerbaijan, and Iran views the Armenian corridor as very important because it's their only land bridge with Russia. Pakistan has started getting closer to the Azeris, and as a result, India is starting to cozy up with Armenia. Then there is Turkey and the question of how involved they would get, and if it would trigger any NATO clauses. And of course there is Russia and CSTO, and the question of how they would respond.
nagorno-karabakh is a majority armenian region inside of azerbaijan that has declared itself the largely unrecognized republic of artsakh. n-k is connected to armenia by a road through the mountains called the lachin corridor, after the city of lachin. the ceasefire in 2020 between armenia and azerbaijan established the corridor under nominal russian protection to allow free travel between armenia and n-k. since april, azerbaijan has set up a roadblock/checkpoint along the corridor ostensibly to control illegal transport of military supplies, but which the armenians are calling a blockade. it's a big mess.
If the Armenian's weren't so horny for genocide I'd support them, but they're no better than the Azeri's. Why should I be upset at the Armenian's being slowly choked out of Nagorno-Karabakh after they forcefully ejected the Azeri's only a couple of decades ago??
Edit: Like no, really, why should I weep for the coercive removal of a bunch of genocidal people who destroyed the homes of others to force them to leave within my own lifetime?
It's the same old story everywhere for the past 200 years. A multi-cultural state of some kind sees collapse or invasion, and a region that was previously characterized by a complex multi-ethnic, multi-religious interdependence scrambles to see where the borders are gonna end up. Once those are already set up, even hypothetically, the situation then devolves into pogroms and massacres.
Azeris and Armenians lived and worked in the whole region. Areas where Azeris or Armenians were in the majority weren't necessarily contiguous. In theory, after the end of the Soviet Union, the two republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan would end up having enclaves within each other - Artsakh and Nakchivan. Only Armenia was much stronger and wealthier than Azerbaijan due to remittances from the Armenian diaspora. After years of pogroms and massacres on both sides, war broke out between the two governments and armenian victory lead to ethnic cleansing in all the districts they seized. Ie, the ones surrounding Artsakh. Oil money and successful political lobbying on the part of Azerbaijan saw the situation invert, the surrounding districts were liberated, and now the armenian enclave is under a blockade.
So why doesn't Azerbaijan just accept the new status quo? There's an internal and an external political component. Modern Azerbaijan was shaped by the trauma of losing the First Nagorno-Karabakh War and the ethnic cleansings thereafter. With descendants of refugees at home, rallying against the Armenians is just good political instinct. As such, the Azeris won't be concilliatory towards the defacto government of Artsakh and will seek to subsume it into the Azeri state if possible. It's not just about preventing future war, there's too much bad blood and too much to profit politically by waging the conflict further. The revanchist component is undeniable. Furthermore, both Armenia and Azerbaijan have rather capable international lobbies with influence in both NATO and the Kremlin. So it's not like anybody but regional powers is gonna go out on a limb for either side.
Speaking of which, there's a wider geopolitical struggle in the region between Turkiye and Iran. The Turks and the Azeris wish to connect the Azeri Nakhchivan enclave to Azerbaijan via rail in the Lanchin Corridor. If they achieve it, then the turkic world would achieve economic corridors that straddle across Eurasia. This is a more pressing matter than ever before since rail links crossing Russia into the EU are disrupted by the Ukraine War and future relations in Europe are uncertain. Meanwhile, while Iran is predicated in a multi-ethnic identity, they are wary of anything that strengthens Azerbaijan and it's links to the turkic world. In theory the azeris of Iran and the azeris of Azerbaijan are actually quite different from one another, but no state is in the business of trust, goodwill and hoping for the best when it comes to territorial claims. Iran, too, has it's own hopes for competing rail and maritime links between east and west. Those plans require Azerbaijan's cooperation, and ideally the Azeris would be compliant junior partner in the caspian rather than victorious at war while bypassing Iran altogether.
This is a very good write up. Israel is an additional actor that should be discussed. 40% of Israel crude petroleum, which it refines in Israel, comes from Azerbaijan. As a resut, the Azeris military is a big customer of the Israel defense industry. A larger conflict that draws in Iran would also likely draw in Israel, which in turn, relaunch both the Israel-Hezbollah conflict and possibly ignite a Third Intifada.
And to top it off, Pakistan has been getting friendly with the Azeris, and Indian has started sending Armenia weapons as a result. This is one of those conflicts that reminds me of WW1 in some ways, where I am sitting around waiting for some backwater politician to get assassinated and it leads to a domino-like triggering of bilateral defense treaties.
Why stop at the aftermath of the first N-K war? Why not address the "Azerification" of N-K in the run up to the war, and the ethnic cleansing of Armenians in N-K that they did at the beginning of the first war with the help of Gorbachev and the Soviets during Operation Ring? Do you think those things are related to the aftermath of the first N-K war?