Hope is not a plan

The government of Pakistan recently announced that it plans to mine and fence portions of its 2,400 km border with Afghanistan. The government of Afghanistan has reacted poorly to this idea, suggesting that it's a dodge around a real problem of elements within Pakistani security forces supporting Taliban remnants in Afghanistan.

Depending on how serious an effort this is, the Pakistani government will face the serious problem of trying to separate Pashtuni people from their relatives and allies on the other side of the border.

al Jazeera article
CNN article

As I discussed in May, the government of Iran has spent the last year trying to figure out how to solve its gas problem. Despite its large oil reserves, Iran has very little refining capacity, and thus is forced to import gasoline. For years, the government has been subsidizing these imports, keeping the prices very low and doing great harm to the national treasury. Since sometime in 2006, they've been thinking of easing off on these subsidies while simultaneously putting in place a gas purchasing cap.

This week, they enacted a cap.

It did not go well.

With less than two hours notice, the government or Iran announced to its citizens that they are now limited to 100 liters of fuel (26 gallons) per month.

Riots broke out soon after, and twelve gas stations were torched in Tehran.

"Guns, fireworks, tanks, [President] Ahmadinejad should be killed," chanted angry youths, throwing stones at police.

Some Iranian members of parliament are calling for a relaxation on the cap, citing the improbably short notice the government gave. The government of Iran is, in turn, presumed to be trying to cut down on its fuel imports before someone (like, say, the US) decides to cut off the gas supply by way of applying pressure against Iran about its nuclear program, interference in Iraq, funding of Hezbollah, or anything else that strikes their fancy.

BBC article

The government of Iran just released from custody two Chinese nationals who were arrested for taking pictures of a military complex in the town of Arak.

The Chinese foreign ministry said: "In early July, two people from Chinese companies mistakenly took some pictures of some sensitive buildings when they were helping local owners to conduct field measurements in Iran.

"They were detained by Iranian police and now they have been freed. The foreign ministry and Chinese embassy in Iran have warned Chinese citizens in Iran to behave so as to prevent misunderstandings."

Indeed. It's always good to prevent these misunderstandings.

BBC article

This week, al Jazeera reminds us that violence often comes as a result of a mismatch between national borders and ethnic boundaries. In our modern age, these conflicts are the unwieldy children of sometimes arbitrary and sometimes very intentional batching and dividing by the major powers of the twentieth century. The territory once bounded by Soviet borders is a poster child for this issue, whether it's Georgia trying not to further subfragment following its release from the USSR, or the ongoing problem of Tatars returning to the Crimea half a century after Stalin banished them to Central Asia. Similarly, the wake of the Ottoman Empire continues to be alive with conflict, most recently embodied in the declaration by the government of Turkey that they will take military action against Kurdish separatist groups hiding within Iraq, despite past requests from their NATO allies that they not cross that border.

Given the increasing power of the smaller party in modern conflict, and the loss of a major bilateral struggle to drown out other noises, it seems likely that wars of ethnic identity will continue as the defining kind of conflict well into the foreseeable future.

The BBC reports today that the 14-year-old ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan was breached as fighting occurred between forces from both nations in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. The Azeri government is claiming that the Armenians intentionally started this incident to distract attention from extensive internal protests within Armenia over claims that last month's elections were rigged.

The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is yet another one of those long-term ethnic conflicts that was contained behind the iron curtain for nearly a century, only to "spring to life" again in the late 80s and early 90s. Around the time of the inception of the Soviet Union, the NK territory had a majority Armenian population. Based on this, the Soviets converted it into an autonomous territory within the nation of Azerbaijan. As the Azeri population increased over time, the ethnic Armenians within the NK territory pushed for unification with Armenia. The formal attempt to do so in 1988 sparked reciprocal massacres of Armenians and Azeris, and prompted the Soviets to give the government of Azerbaijan a freer hand in how it policed the territory.

By 1989, Azerbaijan was actively blockading trade between Armenia and the other Soviet Republics (I bet you had no idea this was going in at the time). Gorbachev's proposal for increased autonomy within the NK territory was met by ethnic violence against Armenians in Azerbaijan, which in turn prompted the Soviets to send an armed presence, killing a number of Azeris.

In 1991, on a day now cited as the independence day of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic, an Armenian referendum within the territory declared it an independent state. This amounted to an immediate secession of about one-fifth of Azerbaijan and the displacement of one million Azeris. Local Armenian forces attacked Azeri forces, pushing them out of the new state and capturing territory to bridge them with Armenia proper. Russia mediated a ceasefire in 1994 -- the same ceasefire that was breached in today's military action.

All told, things seem to have worked out tremendously poorly for Azerbaijan. Russia came in firmly on the side of Armenia, to the tune of a billion dollars in arms during and after the last years of the war, and a friendship agreement between the two nations that included promising fuel supplies from Gazprom to make up for fuel lost due to the Azerbaijani blockade. In contrast, the Azeris have been punished by, among others, the United States for imposing that blockade. That seems, in a word, unfair.

You can read more from the NK Armenian point of view at the website of the NK Republic, or at the website of their DC office. You can read a general summary of the entire situation here at GlobalSecurity.org. You can read more about the Azerbaijani point of view at their embassy web page, including this specific page on the NK conflict, and a recent press release on a massacre of Azeris by Armenian troops in 1992 (that last one is a PDF).

BBC article

Just this last March, a 14-year-old ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan was breached during an incident in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. I gave some background on that situation here, but the short version is that the Nogorno-Karabakh region, located just west of center in Azerbaijan, is predominantly an ethnic Armenian enclave. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, underlying tensions here have been resurrected full force, including fighting from 1991 to 1994, and again this year.

Now, reportedly spurred on by the disastrous outcome of Georgia's recent attempt to rein in South Ossetia, the two nations involved have signed a new agreement to "facilitate the improvement of the situation in the South Caucasus and establishment of stability and security in the region through a political settlement of the conflict based on the principles and norms of international law and the decisions and documents adopted in this framework". Those are the words of Dmitry Medvedev, who helped broker the agreement.

The government of Azerbaijan is surely very aware of the fate of the last government that challenged one of Russia's pet ethnic groups, and wants to avoid being the next Georgia. At the same time, out-and-out ceding of Nogorno-Karabakh represents a loss of one fifth of Azerbaijan, which also seems unacceptable, especially as it will further disrupt the already discontinuous structure of the country by punching a big hole in the center.

BBC article