Tag Archives: Bosnia

‘Europe Is Cooking’: Records Smashed as Historic Heat Alert Issued

While fires rage and temperatures in Western Europe top the charts, the U.K.’s Met Office announced the first-ever red warning for extreme heat expected in the coming days.

By Jessica Corbett  Published 7-15-2022 by Common Dreams

Image” Peter Dynes/Twitter

Several countries across Europe are enduring the dangerous hot conditions that climate scientists have longed warned of and meteorologists project the brutal heatwave could last in some areas through next month.

Spain and Portugal have faced high temperatures since last Friday. According to CNN, at least three Spanish cities set records this week: Ourense at 43.2°C (109.76°F); Soria at 38.7°C (101.66°F); and Zamora at 41.1°C (105.98°F). Continue reading

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Could Congress reverse Trump’s decision to pull troops out of Syria?

U.S. forces are still in Syria, but their role has changed substantially in recent weeks. AP Photo/Baderkhan Ahmad

Sarah Burns, Rochester Institute of Technology

The political and humanitarian outcry condemning President Donald Trump’s decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria came soon after he made the announcement.

Trump’s actions paved the way for Turkish troops to attack U.S.-allied Kurdish forces that had been fighting the Islamic State group. In reaction, on Oct. 15, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a nonbinding resolution opposing his move, with strong bipartisan support. Continue reading

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Will anyone protect the Rohingya?

 

Photo: Foreign and Commonwealth Office via Wikimedia Commons

Vincent A. Auger, Western Illinois University

Since August, the Rohingya, an ethnic minority in Myanmar, has faced what a United Nations official called “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

Recent reports describe a campaign by Myanmar security forces to drive the Rohingya from the country permanently. Hundreds of thousands have fled to camps in neighboring Bangladesh, creating a new refugee crisis.

This is exactly the type of atrocity that the United Nations vowed to combat in 2005, when it asserted a “responsibility to protect” civilian populations from genocidal violence. Yet, little has been done.

Why has “the responsibility to protect” failed, and can the Rohingya be helped?

Responsibility to protect

The “responsibility to protect” doctrine resulted from the humanitarian catastrophes of the 1990s: Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo and especially Rwanda. The world struggled to balance respect for state sovereignty with the imperative to prevent the slaughter of civilians. In 2001, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty issued a report redefining the problem. It stated that states had primary responsibility to protect their populations. But, if they could not or would not, then that duty could be exercised by the international community.

This concept was affirmed by the United Nations at the 2005 World Summit. However, my research on the origins and implementation of the responsibility to protect has demonstrated that this consensus was superficial. Many states, including the United States and China, gave lip service to a “responsibility to protect,” but were unwilling or unable to implement it. The conditions under which the responsibility to protect could be invoked remain deliberately ambiguous.

Words in action: Libya and Cote d’Ivoire

Despite this tepid support, in 2011, the United Nations authorized two operations in countries where civilians were at risk.

In Cote d’Ivoire, United Nations peacekeeping forces intervened to remove the incumbent president, Laurent Gbagbo, who had lost an election and was using the country’s security force to attack civilians in an attempt to remain in power. U.N. forces helped oversee a political transition and maintain security. This intervention was widely seen at the U.N. as a success.

The other intervention was in Libya, after the country’s leader Muammar Gaddafi threatened to slaughter those who opposed his regime. The intervention – led by Britain, France and the United States – successfully prevented Gaddafi’s slaughter of civilians. But it also led to the collapse of his regime, his murder by rebel forces and continuing conflict in post-Gaddafi Libya.

Failure to protect

Despite humanitarian crises in Syria, Yemen and South Sudan, the responsibility to protect has not been used by the U.N. since 2011 to justify intervention. The Libya case helps to explain this: Once the intervening forces helped overthrow Gaddafi, Russia and China declared that the “responsibility to protect” was merely a pretext for the West to conduct regime change. Those countries have repeatedly vetoed U.N. Security Council resolutions on Syria.

Implementing the “responsibility to protect” faces other challenges as well. One is that an intervention to protect civilians may encounter armed resistance from those who are committing the atrocities, as would likely be the case in Syria. A larger, more capable international military force would be necessary to defeat them. Many states will be deterred by the greater costs and risks of such an intervention.

Another challenge is that states and international organizations have multiple goals and priorities. They may not wish to jeopardize relations with the offending regime, or risk other national interests, in order to stop violence. They may even help the regime that is committing the atrocities, as the Russian government has done in Syria, to advance those interests.

Finally, a successful intervention may lead to a costly commitment to provide long-term security and relief – a “responsibility to rebuild,” so to speak. For most states, these potential costs of intervention far outweigh their willingness to act to save lives.

What can we do for the Rohingya?

All these challenges to implementing the responsibility to protect are evident in the Rohingya case. Myanmar authorities have resisted any international role in the crisis, raising the cost of potential intervention. In any case, other states have little interest in taking action. China is shielding Myanmar from pressure in the U.N. Security Council and is trying to pull Myanmar into its sphere of influence. President Trump has not made Myanmar a priority for American foreign policy. Russia, India and other states prefer to work with the regime to further their own interests in the region.

What can be done, then?

Economic and political sanctions against the Myanmar military are a possibility. But without Chinese participation, they would have limited effectiveness. Sanctions might also lead the Myanmar military to reverse recent democratic reforms in the country.

An alternative would be for the United States and other countries to sharply increase aid to Bangladesh, which is hosting the fleeing Rohingya civilians. They might also consider accepting some Rohingya as refugees. However, this could be problematic given the current debate on refugees in the United States and many other countries.

The ConversationIn the longer term, diplomatic and financial pressure, as well as the possibility of indictment for crimes against humanity, may convince Myanmar’s military leaders to cease the ethnic cleansing and allow some Rohingya to return. Unfortunately, no international cavalry is likely to ride to the Rohingya’s rescue.

Vincent A. Auger, Professor of Political Science, Western Illinois University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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How Europe Is Getting Rich by Fueling Its Own Terror Epidemic

By Darius Shahtahmasebi. Published 8-3-2016 by The Anti-Media

Though Europe do not have the rates of gun violence the United States continues to grapple with, European governments have made over a billion euros by fueling gun violence in the Middle East and North Africa.

A report conducted by a team of reporters from the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) found a group of European nations has been funneling arms into the Middle East region since 2012, making at least 1.2 billion euros in the process. Continue reading

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Srebrenica, remembered

What does it mean to have commemoration steeped in contention? Memories of the war-traumatised town of Srebrenica are preventing Bosnia from moving forward.

Written by Brandon Tensley. Published 7-10-15 in OpenDemocracy.

Gravestones at the Srebrenica Genocide memorial.Wikipedia/public domain.

Gravestones at the Srebrenica Genocide memorial.Wikipedia/public domain.

In Bosnia, avoiding everyday reminders of war isn’t easy: Buildings punctured by bullet holes pepper the landscape. It is estimated that there are dozens of undiscovered mass graves scattered across parts of the country. It was in Bosnia two decades ago that an ethno-national land grab between Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs claimed more than 100,000 lives.

Yet dig deeper and twenty years belies the knotty legacy of war in Bosnia, especially for the village-turned-massacre site of Srebrenica. In July 1995, the small salt mining town was shelled and then occupied by the (Bosnian-Serb) Army of Republika Srpska – even though it had been declared a “safe zone” by the United Nations. The occupiers killed some 8,000 Bosniak men and boys. Many consider the Srebrenica massacre, which in 2004 was ruled genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, to be Europe’s worst civilian slaughter since the Second World War. But as has happened every year since 1995, this year’s ceremony for the massacre is conjuring up bitter controversy in and beyond Bosnia.

So, how did Srebrenica become a perennial flashpoint, and what does it mean to have commemoration steeped not in contrition but in contention? Though the answer doesn’t lend itself to easy explanation, it’s best to start with a look at the postwar blueprint for Bosnia. Continue reading

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