World Press on Erdogan, Kamala Harris, Private Militias and Rape: New Age Islam's Selection, 9 October 2020
By New Age Islam Edit
Bureau
9 October
2020
• When Rape Is Okay
By Kajalie Shehreen Islam
• Erdoğan and His Arab 'Brothers'
By Burak Bekdil
• Kamala Harris Knows How to Win Elections
By David Brooks
• The Plot against Gretchen Whitmer Shows the Danger
Of Private Militias
By Mary B. Mccord
• The Conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan
Could Spiral Out Of Control
By Lara Setrakian
-----
When Rape Is Okay
By Kajalie Shehreen
Islam
October 09,
2020
If
rape is not okay, it is not okay for anyone, no matter who they are, where they
were, when and with whom, what they were wearing, what they said or did, or
what their “character” is lik . Photo Muntakim Saad
-----
Is rape
ever okay? Most of us would say no. Yet, something that is "not
okay", happens every day, most often with impunity. According to a report
published by Ain Salish Kendra (ASK) last week, 975 women have been raped in
Bangladesh between January and September of this year. Of them, 43 women were
killed following rape, while 12 women committed suicide. That was before the
news of rape in Sylhet, Rajshahi, Sunamganj, Habiganj, Gopalganj; the rape of
the madrasa student; the teenage girl raped by her
father-turned-"saint"; the 13-year-old pregnant as a result of rape
and now being threatened to withdraw the case; the 12-year-old with special
needs allegedly raped by an 85-year-old man; and the pages of news on rape
reported in the last week. There is a flurry of media reports following every sensational
case, but the heinous crime of rape is committed every single day. While the
numbers are slightly less than during the same time period last year when 1,115
women were raped and 57 women were killed afterwards, the brutality of such
crimes has increased, according to the ASK report.
The video
gone viral last week depicting the gang-rape of the woman in Noakhali is just
the tip of the iceberg, but which raises several questions. What kind of
families, society and legal system do we have, where a woman can be raped for
multiple days at gunpoint and does not feel she can report it? When the same
woman is recorded being stripped and raped by multiple men with sticks while
begging for mercy? When, for over a month, she still does not dare to report the
crime, and it is actually the perpetrators themselves who release the video to
shame her, the victim. When, after everything, and feeling like her own life
has been "ruined", the woman worries about her daughter's in-laws
seeing the video and taking it out on her daughter by throwing her out. Because
that is the kind of society we have made for ourselves, where women's bodies
are not only sites of hatred, violence, venting of frustrations and abuse of
power, but where women themselves are often held responsible for the crimes
committed against them.
If rape was
not "okay", then victims of rape would not be questioned about when
and where they were and why, what they were wearing, what relationship they had
with the rapist, or whether they were sexually active. Every woman, no matter
who they were or what they said or did, would not be threatened with rape on
social media, the comments section of online mainstream media, and even in
person, with the most violent and violating language. Perpetrators would be immediately
arrested, tried and convicted, regardless of whether or not the crimes went
viral in the media. Justice would be done, whether the crime occurred in a
madrasa, in the hill tracts, or at a late-night party. Rapists would not dare
to keep raping repeatedly, assaulting the victims and their families, and
threatening them with worse if they dared to report it to the authorities.
There would not be debates over what does and does not classify as rape based
on archaic laws. There would be more and harsher punishment of rapists. Court
judgments that would "deter other men from going down the same wrong
path" would be highlighted in the media, as it was in the recent case of a
woman convicted of murder. If rape was not "okay", rape jokes and
metaphors would not be normalised in sports or under any circumstances, and
rape would not have become an acceptable weapon for terrorising (mostly) women,
with threats, the actual act, threats of consequences after the act, and the
shame of it forever.
Rape would
not just seem "not okay" if the victims were children, or covered in
a burqa, or accompanied by their husbands. It would not just seem "not
okay" for those with the same beliefs and ideologies. It would not just
seem "not okay" only in the cases where we speak, write, and take to
the streets in angry protest and not the countless others.
If rape is
not okay, it is not okay for anyone, no matter who they are, where they were,
when and with whom, what they were wearing, what they said or did, or what
their "character" is like. We cannot pick and choose the victims we
think did not "deserve" it and show them our support, while others
are raped over and over again—by the rapists, at the police station, the
hospital, in court, in the media, and with our own judgment. Neither can we
choose to punish some perpetrators and not others based on their money,
political influence, official positions, or simply whether or not they fit our
"image" of a rapist. If rape is not okay, every incident needs to be
reported, every case filed, taken to court and issued a prompt and fair
judgment, with severe punishment for the perpetrator which will serve to deter
every other potential rapist.
If rape is
not okay, change must come at every level, from changes in the law in order to
make it more relevant to crimes committed today, to changes in our culture,
society and family, where women are explicitly taught that their lives and
reputations begin and end with their sexuality, and men implicitly learn about
the worst weapon to use to destroy women. If rape is not okay, each and every
legal, political and social institution must be sensitised to deal with
victims/survivors as being just that. If rape is not okay, it is the rapist
whose life should be "ruined", and who should live in fear and shame
forevermore. If rape is not okay, it is the survivor who should be free to live
in society with their honour intact, because their honour does not lie in their
chastity and their shame is not in its violation. If rape is not okay, women
need to be seen not only as sacred mothers and sisters and daughters and
friends who need protection from being violated and ensured justice if they
are, but as human beings with basic human rights to safety and well-being.
While we
express outrage at the most gruesome crimes committed because we cannot turn
away from what is literally staring us in the face, let us not neglect to
demand justice for those who suffer in fearful silence every day. And while we
protest the rape and other atrocious war crimes and crimes against humanity
committed in our history, demanding that harsh justice be done, let us not
forget the crimes that are going down in our history today.
----
Kajalie Shehreen Islam is Assistant Professor,
Department of Mass Communication and Journalism, University of Dhaka.
https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/news/when-rape-okay-1974769
-----
Erdoğan and His Arab 'Brothers'
By Burak Bekdil
October 8,
2020
Recep
Tayyip Erdogan with member of the Turkish Army behind him, image via Wikipedia
-----
EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY: After the infamous Mavi Marmara incident of May 2010, Turkish
president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and then foreign policy tzar Ahmet Davutoğlu
(later PM and now an Erdoğan opponent) pledged to internationally isolate
Israel. This was intended to help them advance their Islamist agenda and
augment an emerging unity in the umma, preferably under Turkish leadership. A
decade later, pragmatic Arab states are lining up to normalize relations with
Israel, leaving state actors Iran and Turkey as well as non-state actor Hamas
in a punishing position of international isolation—exactly where Turkey wanted
to push Israel.
Neither the
Ottoman nor the modern Turkish language has ever been short of racist proverbs
denigrating Arabs and their culture. No more, said Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the
Islamist leader who has been at the helm in Turkey since 2002. He made it a
habit to publicly refer to Arabs, including his then regional nemesis Syrian
president Bashar Assad, as “my Arab brothers.” His goal was to build a Muslim-Arab
pact, a modern umma under Turkish leadership as in Ottoman times, to challenge
Israel in the region and, more broadly, Western civilization. In 2010, Turkey’s
state broadcaster TRT even launched an Arabic language channel, TRT Arabi.
Sadly for Erdoğan, his attempt to fuse Islam and anti-Zionism seems to have
fallen apart.
Turkish
diplomats officially said the recent normalization deal between the UAE and
Israel meant Abu Dhabi was betraying the “Palestinian cause.” This response
from Ankara looked ridiculous, as it appeared to have forgotten that Turkey
itself has had diplomatic relations with Israel since 1949. Turkish Islamists
apparently do not care about looking ridiculous.
In its
September 10 edition, Yeni Akit, a staunchly pro-Erdoğan and Islamist militant
newspaper, said the “Saudis were competing with the UAE in treason [against the
‘Palestinian cause’].” Yeni Akit was referring to the decision by Saudi Arabia
and Bahrain, in a landmark change of policy, to allow all flights to and from
Israel to use their airspace. The trouble with that criticism is that there
too, Israel is one of the 138 countries with which Turkey has mutual accords
for the use of airspace.
According
to this logic, diplomatic relations with Israel and flights using the airspace
of both countries are privileges that should be accorded to one Muslim country
alone: Turkey. If other Muslim countries sign identical accords with Israel,
it’s treason.
This
rhetoric reflects Turkey’s increasing loneliness in the Muslim/Arab world (with
the sole exception of Qatar) after several years of loneliness within the NATO
alliance. Turkey can thus claim the bizarre title: “Odd man out in both NATO
and the Muslim world.”
This state
of affairs has been coming on for years, but Erdoğan has stubbornly refused to
recalibrate his policy.
In early
2019, six nations, including the Palestinian Authority (Erdoğan’s ideological
next of kin), agreed to found the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum. At a July
2019 meeting in Cairo, the energy ministers of Egypt, Cyprus, Greece, Israel,
Italy, and the PA, as well as a representative of the energy minister of
Jordan, said they would form a committee to elevate the Forum to the level of
an international organization that respects the rights of its members to their
natural resources. Erdoğan privately felt betrayed by this act of treason from
his “Palestinian brothers,” comforting himself that the traitors were not
members of his beloved Hamas.
In October
2019, the Arab League condemned Turkey’s cross-border military operation in
northeast Syria as an “invasion of an Arab state’s land and an aggression on
its sovereignty.” The League would consider taking measures against Turkey in
the economic, investment, and cultural sectors, including tourism and military
cooperation. It also called on the UN Security Council to “take the necessary
measures to stop the Turkish aggression and [enforce] the withdrawal from
Syrian territory immediately.” To Ankara’s deep embarrassment, its closest
regional ally, Qatar, did not block the League’s communique condemning Turkey.
Turkey’s
reaction was characteristically childish. Fahrettin Altun, Erdoğan’s
communications director, said the “Arab League do not speak for the Arab
world.” An angry Erdoğan said, “All of you [Arab nations] won’t make one
Turkey.” That’s quite a drift from his “our Arab brothers” rhetoric.
Apparently
in the Turkish world of make-believe, only Turkey’s Islamists or those with a
seal of approval from Ankara can speak for the Arab world. Worse, Erdoğan et al
believe this idea can sell on the Arab street if it is dressed up in nice
anti-Zionist, pro-Hamas rhetoric.
On
September 9, the Arab League condemned Turkey (along with Iran) for
“interference in the region and the Palestinian cause.” At the League’s foreign
ministers’ meeting, Egypt’s FM Sameh Shoukry said Cairo “will not stand
motionless in face of the Turkish greed that is especially being shown in
northern Iraq, Libya, and Syria.” Once again, Ankara “totally rejected” all the
decisions taken at the meeting.
Murat
Yetkin, a prominent Turkish journalist and editor of Yetkin Report, recently
wrote: “With the exception of [currently ambiguous] Libya and Qatar, what
unites the Arabs now is no longer anti-Israeli sentiment but anti-Turkish
sentiment.”
That’s
quite a long political journey to travel, and a tough destination for Erdoğan.
----
Burak
Bekdil is an Ankara-based columnist. He regularly writes for the Gatestone
Institute and Defense News and is a fellow at the Middle East Forum.
https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/erdogan-arab-brothers/
-----
Kamala Harris Knows How to Win Elections
By David Brooks
Oct. 8,
2020
Democratic
US vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris. Photo: Reuters
-----
Back in
February it seemed as if we were about to have one of the most ideologically
polarized elections in American history. President Trump was rushing ahead with
his populist/ego-trip/authoritarian whatchamacallit. The Democrats were
shifting left: Medicare for All, Green New Deal, Bernie Sanders-style
reimagining of capitalism.
The great
political/culture war was at hand!
Instead,
this has turned into the least ideological election in recent times. The
campaign has largely shrunk down from grand ideological issues to two practical
problems: How to get rid of Donald Trump. How to beat Covid-19.
The
shrinkage happened in three stages. First, Democratic primary voters decided
that beating Trump was more important than the revolution. Second, the pandemic
hit. Candidates imagine that if elected they will be able to implement their
grand vision. But as George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump all learned
the hard way, governing is usually about responding to crises you didn’t choose
or foresee.
Third, Joe
Biden and Kamala Harris decided to run a professional campaign. Instead of
trying to please those of us who consume large amounts of media, they have
ruthlessly and effectively focused their campaign on the Exhausted Majority —
people who are disgusted by and semidetached from politics in working-class
homes in the Midwest, in retirement communities in Florida, in suburban
cul-de-sacs everywhere.
Kamala
Harris’s debate performance was the perfect implementation of the strategy and
the perfect illustration of why it is succeeding. A lot of the conversation
about who “won” the debate misses the crucial question of who effectively
implemented her or his campaign’s strategy. Harris did. The Republicans don’t
have a strategy, so Mike Pence’s performance was beside the point.
If you can
stretch your mind back to the Democratic debates of last winter, you may
remember a different Kamala Harris. You might remember that she was held in
suspicion by the left because of her record as a prosecutor but that she was
working hard to shore up support on that flank.
In 2019 she
was ranked as the most liberal person in the Senate, to the left of Sanders, by
Govtrack. She supported the Green New Deal and, for a while, Medicare for All.
She co-wrote an environmental bill with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and proposed spending
plans that one analyst reckoned would cost more than $40 trillion over 10
years.
That’s not
whom we saw Wednesday night. Her first answer on Covid-19 was the most
ingenious of the evening, in that it hit Trump from the right. She did not say
that government should come in and make the country safe with mandates, or even
lead with the mask issue. She said that in January, Trump denied self-reliant
families the information they needed to keep themselves safe. It was the kind
of language a libertarian suspicious of Washington could feel comfortable with.
From there
it was center-left all the way. She asserted her support for a woman’s right to
have an abortion but turned questions about the Supreme Court fight into a
conversation about protecting Obamacare.
The three
supporters she name-checked were Colin Powell, Cindy McCain and John Kasich.
When asked about racial justice, she didn’t talk expansively about systemic
racism but focused more practically on what she did as a prosecutor.
Big
controversial issues were dodged or avoided altogether: Bernie-style class
conflict, even any comprehensive talk about inequality and redistribution. When
she was asked directly about the Green New Deal, she immediately reminded
voters that Joe Biden wouldn’t ban fracking, and she then sketched out a set of
policies much more moderate than those she’d embraced in the primaries.
The
policies she did embrace mostly came from the center-left Obama playbook:
preserving and extending Obamacare, protecting those with pre-existing
conditions, investing in renewable energy and infrastructure, free community
college, preserving tax cuts for anybody making less than $400,000 a year.
The one
plausible argument the Republicans had against Biden was that he is a Trojan
horse for the far left. After the first few months of the campaign and
especially after Wednesday night, it is simply hard to believe that. When Biden
said in the first presidential debate, “I am the Democratic Party,” it was
inartfully put, but it’s closer to the truth than I would have imagined a few
months ago.
How you
campaign is how you govern. As people who have served in past administrations
understand, once in office it is nearly impossible to rally support for issues
and plans you didn’t take to the American people during the fall. All those
plans buried in Biden campaign reports but being ignored now will not suddenly
burst to life after Inauguration Day. That’s why it’s unlikely that Biden and
Harris would switch sharply back to the left once elected.
Trump’s stated
reluctance to accept the election results means that Biden has to run this way.
He can’t run an ideological campaign that wins a bare majority. He has to
inarguably crush Trump with the broadest possible coalition.
So far,
that’s what’s happening. There’s a moment in many American campaigns when the
people see chaos looming on the horizon. It happened in 2008 with the fall of
Lehman Brothers and in 1968 with the riots. At those moments, Americans shift
to the candidates who provide safety and order. Americans have seen chaos loom,
particularly over the past nine days, and Biden and Harris seem like the safest
and least exhausting pair of hands.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/08/opinion/kamala-harris-2020-election.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
-----
The Plot against Gretchen Whitmer Shows the
Danger of Private Militias
By Mary B. McCord
Oct. 8,
2020
In the
swirls of disinformation that now pollute our political discourse, one is particularly dangerous: that private
militias are constitutionally protected.
Although
these vigilante groups often cite the Second Amendment’s “well regulated
militia” for their authority, history and Supreme Court precedent make clear
that the phrase was not intended to — and does not — authorize private militias
outside of government control.
Indeed,
these armed groups have no authority to call themselves forth into militia
service; the Second Amendment does not protect such activity; and all 50 states
prohibit it.
The danger
of these groups was brought home on Thursday with the announcement that the
F.B.I. had thwarted a plot by people associated with an extremist group in
Michigan to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and overthrow the government.
Court documents
say that the group discussed trying the governor for treason and murdering
“tyrants.” Six men now face federal kidnapping conspiracy charges, but
unauthorized militia activity continues in Michigan and elsewhere.
The unnamed
militia involved in the kidnapping plot is part of a growing number of private
paramilitary groups mobilizing across the country, wholly outside of lawful
authority or governmental accountability. These organizations — some of which
openly refer to themselves as “militias,” while others reject the term — often
train together in the use of firearms and other paramilitary techniques and
“deploy,” heavily armed and sometimes in full military gear, when they deem it
necessary.
Sometimes
they want to fight against the perceived tyranny of the states, as when they
stormed the Capitol in Lansing, Mich., this spring to demand the end of the
governor’s pandemic shutdown order, egged on by President Trump’s tweets to
“LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”
Sometimes
they want to usurp the functions of law enforcement, as they’ve done in
Kenosha, Wis., and elsewhere, purporting to “protect” property during racial
justice protests, often in response to false rumors about leftist violence,
rumors stoked by the president’s calls to designate “antifa” as a terrorist organization.
Most
alarmingly, some of them are planning their own poll-watching and openly
training in preparation for the post-election period.
Whatever
their stated purpose, their conduct is unlawful and not constitutionally
protected. Even before the adoption of the Constitution, the colonies
recognized the importance of a “well regulated” militia to defend the state, in
preference over standing armies, which they perceived as a threat to liberty.
The militia consisted of able-bodied residents between certain ages who had a
duty to respond when called forth by the government.
But “well
regulated” meant that the militias were trained, armed and controlled by the
state. Indeed, 48 states have provisions in their constitutions that explicitly
require the militia to be strictly subordinate to the civil authority.
Likewise,
state constitutions and laws then and now generally name the governor as the
commander in chief of its armed forces — and only the governor or a designee
has the power to call forth the able-bodied residents for militia service.
Emerging
from the American Revolution, the founders reasonably were wary of insurgencies
that could threaten the stability of the new Union. Shays’ Rebellion and other
early armed uprisings against the states only solidified those fears. Thus, the
“well regulated militia” in the Constitution’s Second Amendment refers to the
militia once called forth by the government, not by private vigilante
organizations deciding when and under what circumstances to organize and self-deploy.
The federal
and state government control of the militia has also been confirmed by the
Supreme Court. In 1886, the court upheld the constitutionality of a state
criminal law that made it unlawful for “any body of men” outside state or
federal governmental authority to “associate themselves together as a military
company or organization, or to drill or parade with arms in any city or town of
the state.”
This
criminal statute and others were enacted after the Civil War and are on the
books of 29 states. The Supreme Court said without question that states had
authority to control and regulate military bodies and associations as
“necessary to the public peace, safety and good order.”
The court’s
1886 decision was reaffirmed in 2008 in Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority
opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller. That case established that the
Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms for self-defence,
but “does not prevent the prohibition of private paramilitary organizations.”
Although there are many gray areas about Second Amendment rights, this is not
one of them.
Which
brings us back to the authority of the states. In addition to state
constitutional and statutory schemes by which only the governor may activate
“able-bodied” residents for militia service, other laws also forbid
paramilitary activity and the usurpation of law enforcement and peacekeeping
authority.
Twenty-five
states prohibit teaching, demonstrating or practicing in the use of firearms or
“techniques” capable of causing injury or death for use during a civil
disorder. Eighteen states prohibit either the false assumption of the duties of
public officials, including law-enforcement officials, or the wearing of
uniforms similar to military uniforms.
All these
laws point to a single conclusion: There is no right in any state for groups of
individuals to arm themselves and organize either to oppose or augment the
government.
Now, more
than ever, state and local officials must enforce these statutes. In
battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as other
hotbeds of militia activity like Oregon, Idaho, Virginia and Texas, they must
ready themselves for unlawful private militias showing up at the polls and on
the streets during ballot counting and beyond.
Those
groups, like the Three Percenters, Oath Keepers and others that claim to be
“patriots” but answer to their own interpretation of the Constitution, are
likely to hear the president’s unsupported claims about election fraud as their
license to deploy to the polls to “protect” or “patrol” the vote.
Their armed
presence not only would violate state anti-paramilitary laws, it would likely
violate laws against voter intimidation as well. State attorneys general,
secretaries of state, local prosecutors, law enforcement officers and election
workers must know about these laws and be prepared to enforce them. They should
announce this in advance and consider taking pre-emptive action through
attorney general legal opinions, cease and desist orders, and prosecutions or
civil litigation.
These
efforts must continue after the election, when the threat of civil unrest could
be at its greatest. State and local leaders, in both parties, must denounce
armed militia activity, whether from the right or the left.
These leaders
may also have to take swift action to protect public safety and preserve
constitutional rights. But the law is on their side — private armed militias
find no support in the U.S. or state constitutions or in American history. They
must not be tolerated in our society.
Mary B.
McCord, legal director for Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional
Advocacy and Protection and a visiting professor, was the acting assistant
attorney general for national security at the Department of Justice from 2016
to 2017.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/08/opinion/militias-gretchen-whitmer.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
-----
The Conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan
Could Spiral Out of Control
By Lara Setrakian
Oct. 8,
2020
Taking shelter in a hospital basement,
19-year-old George Alexanian can hear the suicide drones buzzing overhead in
the city of Stepanakert.
A few days
ago, he said, one of them headed toward the hospital but was struck down before
it could explode. Yet being there, he told me, is better than staying home,
where every strike felt like an earthquake. His sister is a doctor, working
upstairs and sleeping in the hallway because the beds are all full.
“We get
used to it,” he said. “But it’s hard to live not knowing if you’re safe.”
Workers
hurry out of other basements for a few hours, then rush back down to shelter.
Eleven days into an escalating fight between Armenia and Azerbaijan,
Stepanakert is being pummelled with missiles and drone fire. One building that
still stands is the home of the National Assembly of the Republic of Artsakh, a
country that has never been recognized by the wider world.
Known
internationally as Nagorno-Karabakh, the tiny Armenian separatist enclave in
Azerbaijan is at the centre of a dangerous conflict that has drawn in Turkey
and Russia — and claimed hundreds of lives. Without engagement from the United
States, whose attention to the region has slipped, the situation could spiral
out of control.
The
conflict is an unresolved leftover from the Soviet Union. In 1923, Communist
rulers placed Nagorno-Karabakh and its ethnic Armenian majority within the
borders of Soviet Azerbaijan, giving it special status with a high degree of
self-rule. As the Soviet Union was collapsing in 1991, the region declared its
own independence, setting off a war that lasted until a cease-fire in 1994.
That held for 26 years, though clashes have broken out over the past four
years.
This round
of hostilities, which started on Sept. 27, is different. What had previously
been theoretically possible but highly improbable military actions —
Azerbaijani drones flying within 20 miles of Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, or an
Armenian strike on a military base in Azerbaijan’s second city, Ganja — were
quickly carried out. The next targets could be oil and gas facilities in
Azerbaijan, or Yerevan and Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku.
The threat
of mutually assured destruction was supposed to be a deterrent that kept each
side in check. Now it risks becoming reality. Azerbaijan, encouraged and
materially supported by Turkey, has vowed to fight until its control of
Nagorno-Karabakh is assured. Armenians, for their part, have vowed to give
their last drop of blood to maintain the region’s independence.
The
fighting has expanded beyond anything seen in the past few decades. If it
develops into an Azerbaijani attack on Armenian soil, it would be likely to
bring the direct participation of Russia, which is treaty-bound to protect
Armenia. At that point, with Turkey and Russia on opposing sides, the wider
region could be engulfed by war.
It was the
United States that once led the effort to avoid such a disaster as one of the
co-chairs of the Minsk Group, the body created by the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe to negotiate a settlement to the conflict. After the
cease-fire in 1994, the group began intense rounds of diplomacy, including the
promising peace talks at Key West, Fla., in 2001, overseen by a sharp cast of
American diplomats.
But America
is now practically absent from the peace process. Its meeting in Geneva on
Thursday with France and Russia, the other co-chairs of the group, comes after
nearly two weeks of inaction. No major proposals or initiatives have emerged
from the group since 2007. The United States’ interest gradually dropped away.
“They’ve
been taking a step back for mostly a decade,” Stefan Meister, the head of the
Heinrich Böll Foundation’s office for the South Caucasus, told me. “They have
left it to Russia to solve this conflict, or at least negotiate a cease-fire.”
But the
group is designed for American leadership. It reflects the power structure and
political will of the 1990s, when the United States was committed to peace and
development in the former Soviet Union. As Washington disengaged, it didn’t call
in another country to replace it or rejigger the format. The structure stayed
the same; the peace process just went quiet. Azerbaijan’s leaders have said
that’s why they lost patience and moved to resolve the issue by force.
Now, with
Turkey’s overt assistance on the Azerbaijani side — its drones are some of the
deadliest flying over Stepanakert — few countries other than the United States
stand a chance of halting the violence.
“The U.S.
can act as a spur for better diplomacy,” said Salman Shaikh, an expert in
conflict resolution. America still has the relationships, leverage and
strategic assets needed to move the process forward. But without a strong
American presence, the peace process will lack critical heft. The consequences
could be grave.
Playing the
world’s policeman may have proven too expensive for America’s taste and too
expansive for its capabilities. But active diplomatic engagement — appointing a
special envoy or assigning a senior State Department official the job — would
be a relatively low-cost way for America to prevent loss of life and the
devastating consequences of a regional war.
Azerbaijanis
say they have the right to control all the territory within their United
Nations-recognized borders and want restitution for those displaced by the
1990s war, some 600,000 people. Armenians say the inhabitants of
Nagorno-Karabakh have the right to democratic self-determination. They also
fear being slaughtered if they come under Azerbaijani rule.
But those
arguments don’t have a chance to play out toward resolution until robust
negotiations are back on track. If that doesn’t happen, the alternative is more
than just two countries giving each other a bloody nose. It is a fearsome
regional conflict that would do irrevocable damage to the world.
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Lara Setrakian is a journalist and the chief
executive of News Deeply.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/08/opinion/nagorno-karabakh-armenia-azerbaijan.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
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