Ukraine's President Honors Controversial Partisan

Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko isn’t leaving office quietly. Fresh from his embarrassing loss in Ukraine’s presidential election last Sunday, (he won only about 5% of the vote) Yushchenko conferred “Hero of Ukraine” status upon the controversial WWII-era partisan leader Stepan Bandera. To Ukrainian nationalists, Bandera is a hero who fought passionately for an independent Ukraine in the 1930’s and 40’s; Russia and many ethnic Russian Ukrainians though, view Bandera as a Nazi collaborator who led a brutal guerilla war against the Soviet Union. Bandera was killed in Germany in 1959 by KGB agents.

The decision on whether to honor Bandera or not has been a source of controversy in Ukraine in recent years. Monuments in his honor have been raised in several cities in western Ukraine, where he is cast as a patriot for his efforts to resist Soviet rule, though at least one town in eastern Ukraine, where much of the country’s ethnic Russian population lives, set up their on memorial to the “victims” of Bandera’s nationalist militia. The militia organized by Bandera operated in a wide area of southeastern Europe during the war, so the controversy over their actions is not limited to just Ukraine and Russia. Slovakia has expressed their own disapproval of Yushchenko’s honoring him because of alleged atrocities committed by Bandera’s militia in Czechoslovakia during the war, while Poland last August banned a Ukrainian youth group from entering the country during a bike rally to honor Bandera because of charges that his militia was responsible for the deaths of perhaps 100,000 Poles during the war as well.

In honoring Bandera in the waning days of his term, Yushchenko is continuing some the policies that marked his presidency – stoking Ukrainian nationalism while at the same time provoking Russia. It was a deliberate strategy on the part of Yushchenko to try to once and for all break Ukraine out of Russia’s sphere of influence. But it was also a policy that overlooked the long history of deep cultural and ethnic ties between the two nations, as well as the fact that a large portion of Ukraine’s population – 30% or more – are themselves ethnic Russians who didn’t appreciate the sometimes open hostility Yushchenko showed towards Russia. In the end Yushchenko’s policies did more to cause tension between Ukraine’s ethnic groups than to build a new national identity. The two candidates in the February 7th run off election – Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and former President Viktor Yanukovych – are both proposing to improve relations between Kiev and Moscow as part of their campaigns.

Haiti Latest: Aid, Critiques and Spy Drones

It’s been a little over a week since the devastating earthquake in Haiti, yet some conservative commentators are already using the country’s long-standing problems with poverty as an excuse to call for the end of foreign development aid. In my latest post over at The Mantle, I take on the critics and ask why they don’t also discuss America’s role in causing Haiti’s endemic levels of poverty in the first place?

Meanwhile, if you’re wondering what nations have given in disaster relief to Haiti so far, the Associated Press has compiled this handy list. The grand total so far is estimated to be around $1 billion, with more than half of that total coming from the 27 nations of the European Union and another $130 million from the United States – the single largest contribution by any nation.

And the United States has been providing far more to Haiti than only money. According to Wired.com’s Dangerroom blog, the US contribution to aid efforts has even included a high-flying spy drone. An Afghanistan-bound Global Hawk, which can fly up to 14 hours beaming back hi-definition images to ground controllers, was diverted to Haiti to take pictures of the devastated capital Port-au-Prince that are being used to assist in rescue and recovery efforts. The pictures included images of famous landmarks in Port-au-Prince, like the National Cathedral shown above, which is now little more than a rubble-filled shell. Unlike most Global Hawk images, the US Southern Command has taken the step of immediately declassifying all the pictures taken of Port-au-Prince so that they can be freely used by anyone who needs them.

Is Somalia’s Pirate Economy Starting To Fall Apart?

On Tuesday the pirates scored their largest ransom to date, $7 million for the Greek tanker Maran Centarus, which was captured 800 miles out to sea in the Indian Ocean late last November. But reports from Haradheere, Somalia are that a gun battle soon broke out between two groups over a disagreement on sharing the booty.

You might remember this post from last month about how a stock exchange, where patrons could “invest” in pirate missions, had emerged in Haradheere. The gunfight could be the result of the pirates who seized the Maran Centarus trying to renege on paying off their backers. According to the Times of London, this particular band of pirates is from the Puntland region of Somalia, to the north of Haradheere. It could be that they thought they could slip out of town without first paying off their local investors.

The pirate stock exchange basically runs on the honor system – investors give pirates money and equipment with the understanding that they will receive a portion of the prize should the pirates successfully capture and ransom a ship. But if the pirates refuse to share the wealth, the whole system falls apart. And with essentially no functioning government in that portion of Somalia, the Puntland pirates and Haradheere locals will have to sort this dispute out themselves.

Round One Done In Ukraine Elections

Round One of the presidential elections in Ukraine are over, as expected former President Viktor Yanukovych finished in first place with more than 31% of the vote. And despite her warnings of voter fraud, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko finished a close second with around 27%; in fact Tymoshenko was the only candidate to dramatically outperform the pre-election polls, winning 10% more of the electorate than the latest polls indicated she would. Former economics minister Sergey Tigipko, who one poll predicted might challenge Tymoshenko for the number two spot, came in a distant third with 10%, current President Viktor Yushchenko meanwhile gathered a mere 5% of the vote.

This sets the stage for a Tymoshenko-Yanukovych showdown on February 7. Even in its first hours the run-off campaign is becoming nasty and personal. In a speech last night Tymoshenko blasted Yanukovych as being corrupt and undemocratic, while he tried to tar her with the unfulfilled promises of the Orange Revolution. Conventional wisdom is that in the second round Tymoshenko has the edge over Yanukovych. His support has largely come from the sizable ethnic Russian populations in the cities of Ukraine’s industrial heartland in the east, there’s a lot of doubt though that he’ll be an attractive candidate in other parts of the country. Tymoshenko, meanwhile, has been actively trying to reach out to the Russian population in the east while also calling on the supporters of the 16 defeated candidates from the first round of voting to rally around her as the “democratic” choice in the run-off.

Either candidate is likely to rebuild the strained relationship between Ukraine and Russia. Back in 2004, Moscow threw its support solidly behind Yanukovych because of his close ties to Ukraine’s ethnic Russian population. Recently though Russia has been warming to the idea of President Tymoshenko. She has actively worked to avoid another crisis with Russia over natural gas supplies, making those in the Kremlin feel like she’s someone they can do business with. Then there’s the matter of her former advisor Vitali Gaiduk, a part-owner of the massive Ukrainian steel producer ISD Corporation, which is in negotiations with a group of Russian investors, including the state-run Vnesheconombank, who are looking to take it over. Such a deal would of course boost economic ties between Kiev and Moscow and be a further indication of Tymoshenko’s openness to Russian influence.

Tymoshenko, meanwhile, is portraying herself as a populist, mother figure for Ukraine. "As long as I am prime minister, my family is Ukraine and the entire Ukrainian people," she said on a recent campaign stop.

Should We Leave The Persian Gulf?

I tend to be hot and cold on the works of Thomas Friedman – he sometimes makes good points, but they’re rarely the revelations he portrays them to be. His latest column in the New York Times “What’s Our Sputnik?” though got me thinking.

In it Friedman questions America’s deep involvement in the Middle East – he argues that the money we are spending on anti-terrorism could be better spent in developing alternative sources of energy that would make us less dependent on the Mid East, meaning we could lessen our engagement with the region, which would in turn – he argues – would make us less a target for terrorists based, funded or inspired by sources in the region.

There is a certain logic to his argument, but it made me think of something else. In his column, Friedman notes that our two largest foreign suppliers of oil are Canada and Mexico. What he doesn’t say is that most estimates are by the middle of this new decade we find ourselves in the nations of Africa will surpass the countries of the Persian Gulf as suppliers of oil to America. So in my mind that begs the question: why should the United States keep dedicating so many of our resources to a region that in just five years will be a third-rate source of oil for us? China is talking about opening a naval base in the Persian Gulf; France is establishing one in the region as well. Maybe then it’s time to let some of the world’s other major oil importers share the burden of keeping stability in that part of the world?

Just a thought.

Senegal Makes Unique Aid Offer To Haitians

While offers of aid to quake-ravaged Haiti have been pouring been pouring in from around the world, Senegal’s is unique. There, President Abdoulaye Wade has offered land and “repatriation” to any Haitians who want to return to their ancestral homeland.

A spokesman for Wade said their country was ready to offer Haitians who had lost everything in the quake a parcel of land in Senegal so they could start over, and if enough Haitians took them up on the offer, they could perhaps be granted an entire region. The spokesman went on to stress that this would be good land in a fertile part of Senegal not worthless land out in the desert.

It’s quite a generous offer for sure, though at the moment I’m sure water and medicine would be more useful. We’ll follow this story and see if any Haitians take President Wade up on his offer.

Georgia Becomes Ground Zero For Conspiracy Theories

In the past few days the Russian press has floated a couple of pretty remarkable conspiracy theories surrounding their neighbor to the south, Georgia.

On Friday, Russia Today ran a piece suggesting that terrorist groups were being trained by “foreign instructors” at bases in Georgia to then launch attacks aimed at destabilizing the already fragile Northern Caucasus region of southern Russia. In the past year, several of Russia’s Northern Caucasus republics have been rocked by high-profile terrorist attacks, including the attempted assassination of the president of the Republic of Ingushetia. Last year, Russia’s top security agency, the FSB, even went so far as to accuse the Georgian military’s special forces branch of actually training al-Qaeda operatives to conduct terror attacks in southern Russia.

It’s worth remembering here that in 2008 Russia and Georgia fought a five-day war over the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia has since recognized the independence of the two regions and has stationed peacekeeping troops in both, while the Georgians insist that the two places are still part of Georgia.

Meanwhile in Ukraine, the frontrunner in today’s presidential election, Viktor Yanukovych, is claiming that Georgia is trying to interfere in his country’s political process. He warned that in the past few days three charter flights have arrived from Georgia carrying “400 athletic men”. Why these 400 athletic men chose now to visit Ukraine is unclear, though the inference is that they’re in town to disrupt the election. For the past few years Ukraine and Georgia have grown closer as their respective pro-Western leaders have tried to distance their countries from Moscow. But Yanukovych is widely seen as being pro-Russian and the belief is that if he’s elected president he’ll try to rebuild the close Ukraine-Russia relationship at the expense of Ukraine’s relations with the West.

Interestingly, Ukraine’s election commission earlier refused to register 3,000 observers that Georgia tried to send to monitor today’s election. The Georgians were attempting to send more election monitors than all of the other countries and international organizations watching the vote combined, a move that raised some eyebrows and sparked charges that the “monitors” were really meant to disrupt the election instead.

Perhaps feeding into this regional paranoia over Georgia is a recent report issued from a member of the United States Senate; Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican member of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee issued a carefully-worded report warning of a de facto arms embargo against Georgia. The logic goes that because of lower costs and familiarity in dealing with the weaponry thanks to their shared history as parts of the Soviet Union, the Georgian military is still largely equipped with Russian-made gear. But Russian firms are refusing to sell their wares to Georgia, which is still trying to rebuild its military from the 2008 conflict. The Georgians are touting the report as justification for the United States to begin arms sales to them, though the Lugar report never explicitly endorses this idea.

Officials from Abkhazia and South Ossetia, meanwhile, are saying that the Georgian desire to acquire American weapons is another indication that Georgia is in fact a belligerent, destabilizing force in the Caucasus region.

UN Shuts Haiti Medical Center – WTF?

The news out of Haiti last night was too much to believe. CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta was reporting from a small, makeshift medical center operating out of a tent in Port-au-Prince where more than two dozen badly wounded Hatians were finally receiving at least some medical care. That is until a group of UN peacekeepers arrived and ordered the doctors to abandon the field hospital over concerns for their safety. They were ordered to take the doctors away, but not the patients, who apparently were suppose to fend for themselves.

Dr. Gupta was dumbstruck, so too were CNN’s Anderson Cooper and retired General Russel Honore, who helped to bring order back to New Orleans in the days following Hurricane Katrina. To his great credit, Dr. Gupta stayed as the other medical staff were evacuated to tend to the patients they left behind, he even enlisted his camera crew to serve as healthcare aides. They had no problems with “security” during the night (seriously, with the entire city crying out for medical care, why would anyone attack one of the few places providing it?)

By morning, there was a change of heart somewhere and the medical staff was allowed to return to the medical center. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon even issued a statement saying that the UN had not ordered the medical staff to leave, blaming the evac order on “other agencies” – Ban’s story is hard to believe though since the medical staff specifically told Gupta they were being ordered to leave by the United Nations, the CNN film crew has video of a UN-marked vehicle arriving at the tent site and of UN peacekeepers talking with the staff.

I have to say that I support the mission and ideals of the United Nations, and I know that they employ many bright and compassionate people. But incidents like last night at the clinic in Haiti give credence to some of the biggest criticisms of the UN – for example that it is such a massive bureaucracy that it often undermines the good work it is trying to do. Granted, the UN headquarters in Port-au-Prince was destroyed in the earthquake, killing many members of the staff and plunging the UN mission into chaos (it was the largest single-day loss of life ever suffered among UN staff). But Haiti is a disaster-prone nation, in addition to the threat of earthquakes, Haiti is often struck by hurricanes – it was hit by four tropical storms in less than two months in 2008 that caused widespread damage. It would only make sense then for the UN to have had a contingency plan in place should the PAP headquarters be knocked out (the northern city of Cap Haitien for example was not affected by the quake).

Another critique the health clinic debacle is bound to bring up again is the charge that UN peacekeepers are often little more than blue helmeted bystanders. Rather than evacuating the doctors, why couldn’t a few UN peacekeepers have provided security for the clinic instead? It’s worth noting again that Dr. Gupta and crew passed the night without incident in this allegedly “dangerous” place. Surely a few peacekeepers would have been more than enough of a show of force to keep order and it is hard to argue, given the health care situation in Haiti at the moment, that they could have been better used elsewhere.

The bottom line is that United Nations projects and programs do great things in many neglected corners of the world. But if they are overmatched in Haiti – and given the losses at their headquarters it’s understandable that they may be – and they are more of a hindrance than a help, then they should step aside and let those who can provide aid in these very difficult times do just that.

Pre-Claims of Election Fraud in Ukraine

The first round of Ukraine's presidential election isn't even scheduled to take place until this Sunday, but already candidate (and current Prime Minister) Yulia Tymoshenko is talking about voter fraud. She's claiming there's an ongoing "deliberate disruption of the election process" on behalf of her chief rival, former president and current front-runner Viktor Yanukovych in the Donetsk region, his power base.

It was Yanukovych's alleged vote-rigging during the 2004 presidential election that sparked the whole Orange Revolution and brought Tymoshenko, along with current President Viktor Yushchenko to power in the first place, so these are charges that resonate historically in Ukraine at least. But as Yanukovych pointed out in his reply, it's a pretty difficult thing for opposition candidates to rig an election, that's usually only something that can be done by a sitting government which is already in control of the state apparatus that runs the elections in the first place.

And while cat fights between politicians are always amusing, by talking about fraud in a vote that hasn't even taken place is a pretty reckless thing for Tymoshenko to do. The worst possible outcome for Ukraine would be to have a closely-fought election where the losing side thinks that the vote was stolen from them. Ukraine can likely survive another five years of inept political leadership, whether the country can endure another political crisis following a hotly disputed election is another matter entirely. Tymoshenko's complaints of "pre-fraud" seem more like the actions of a politician doing whatever they need to so that they can hang onto power rather than someone truly concerned with the democratic growth of their country.

One reason for Tymoshenko's claims could be the latest polling data. The conventional wisdom has been that she and Yanukovych will meet in the February run-off. But a poll released this week by the Russian firm VTsIOM shows Sergiy Tigipko, a banker and former Economy Minister, edging past Tymoshenko into second place, which would put her out of the run-off. The same poll showed Yanukovych leading all 18 candidates with 30%.

Italy Creates "Whites Only" Town

Racist violence took another ugly turn in Italy over the weekend as two days of rioting was capped off by an ethnic cleansing of African migrant workers from the small, southern Italian village of Rosarno, turning it into what, according to The Guardian newspaper, one politician called “the world’s only entirely white town.”

The cycle of violence was sparked last Thursday after two Africans, among hundreds who came to work in the local orchards picking fruit, were shot for apparently no reason. This launched a protest by at least 100 other Africans, which turned violent and led to widespread damage in Rosarno. Italians from the region then apparently descended on the migrant camp beating and in some cases shooting the migrants they came across in retaliation, whether they had been involved in the earlier riot or not.

Italian officials had to remove more than 1,000 African migrants from the Rosarno area for their own safety. Several hundred went with authorities only after being promised that they would not be deported even if it was found that they had overstayed their visas. But Italy’s Interior Minister Roberto Maroni soon reneged on that deal saying that the law on visas was clear and would be exercised. Meanwhile, by Wednesday bulldozers were demolishing what was left of the migrant camp where the workers had lived.

This is far from the first attack in Italy in just the past year directed against African migrants or the Roma (or Gypsy) community or even immigrants from Eastern Europe. My question is how much longer is the European Union going to tolerate this kind of behavior from one of their core members? Keep in mind that the EU makes a big deal about their support for minority populations within Europe and respect for human rights in general. There was a time when politicians and governments in Europe took a stand against South Africa’s attempts to create “whites only” towns, it’s long past time that they take a stand against officials in Italy for trying to do the same thing.