Category: Russia

TFF PressInfo: Kosovo 15 years later, a personal memory and a word about free research

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By Jan Oberg

Lund, Sweden March 24, 2014

Media with a pro-Western bias usually remind us of 9/11 based on a victim narrative. We just passed 3/20 – the 11th Anniversay of the war on Iraq. Every year they forget 10/7 (Afghanistan) and 3/24, the destruction of Serbia-Kosovo in 1999.

What to do when NATO’s raison d’etre – the Warsaw Pact – had dissolved? Answer: Turn NATO into a humanitarian bombing organisation which in – fake – Gandhian style could say: We are bombing for a higher ethical humanitarian purpose to save lives and on this exceptionalist moral high ground we ignore international law.

Kosovo 15 years later

Kosovo remains a unique result of propaganda and mass killings to produce and independent state without a UN Security Council mandate – which doesn’t prevent Western politicians from teaching Russia international law these very days.

If Kosovo, why not Tibet, Taiwan, the Basque country, Korsica, Kurdistan, Palestine, or Crimea? The answer is: Kosovo was exceptional. But why? Oil and gas, perhaps, see later…Read More »

Far from good enough, Mr. Putin !

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By Johan Galtung

History matters, not only law; like how Crimea and Abkhazia-South Ossetia–basically Russian-Orthodox–became Ukrainian-Georgian. Two Soviet dictators, Khrushchev and Stalin, attached to Ukraine and Georgia, so decided, by dictate. The local people were not asked, nor were Hawaiians when the USA annexed their Kingdom in 1898–by dictate.

The first referendum in Crimea was held last Sunday, 16 March 2014: an overwhelming No to Ukraine and Yes to the Russian federation.

Khrushchev’s 1954 transfer of Crimea was within the Soviet Union, and under Red Army control. But the Soviet Union collapsed and the Red Army became the Russian army; the conditions were no longer valid. George W. Bush wanted Ukraine and Georgia to become NATO members, moving the Russian minorities two steps away from Russia. Nothing similar applies to the other Russian minorities in the former Soviet republics. They are people living on somebody else’s land, not people living on their own land.

What happened to Crimea was a correction of what had become a basic mistake. Although Russia moving into eastern Ukraine could be–as the West says–invasion-occupation-annexation. But highly unlikely.

Unless civil war breaks out between Ukraine West and East and the Russian minority in the East–Donetsk–is in danger. Russia will not stand by watching, just as NATO would not if something similar happened close to the Polish border in Lvov.

This simply must not happen; nevertheless it is getting close.Read More »

Putin and his Crimea speech

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By Jonathan Power

March 25th 2014

President Vladimir Putin’s speech to both houses of the Russian parliament last week got bad notices. Anne Applebaum, the experienced Russian-watcher, wrote in her column in the Washington Post that it was “an imperial rant” and went on to say that “Nato should moves its forces from Germany to the alliance’s eastern borders”. Most Western governments also gave their own misleading interpretations of Putin’s speech.

In this column I’m not going to defend Putin up and down the hill. I profoundly reject the way the absorption of Crimea into Russia was carried out. One can’t mount a referendum on an issue as important as this with two weeks’ notice – the Scots have been discussing their planned referendum, set for later this year, for years.

Moreover, this referendum only had two questions: whether the voters wanted to go back to Russia or whether they wanted increased autonomy. It didn’t ask if voters wanted to remain part of Ukraine.Read More »

TFF PressInfo: Crimea – The referendum, the mote and the beam

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By Jan Oberg

Lund, Sweden March 16, 2014

Of course it is illegal and of course it will be rigged, that referendum in Crimea today. And of course it is a ploy and comes only in the wake of Russia’s (read Putin’s) unprovoked aggression, used as a pretext to build a new Greater Russia.

That is, if you browse the mainstream Western media the last week and on this Sunday morning.

Referendum means referring an issue back to the people. It is – or should be – an important instrument in democracies. And it’s a much better instrument than war and other violence to settle complex conflicts.

Generally, citizens-decided conflict-resolution is likely to last longer and help healing wounds of the past than any type of solution imposed by outside actors.

In Switzerland citizens go and vote on all kinds of issues on many a Sunday throughout the year. Sweden has used it to decide about nuclear energy, Denmark about EU membership and – in 1920 – to solve the conflicts in Schleswig-Holstein and define the future border between Germany and Denmark. Referendums, binding as well as non-binding, are an accepted instrument in many countries.

Why did the West not use referendums?

The West likes to pride itself of its type of democracy whenever and wherever it can. But it doesn’t use the referendum instrument that often. Read More »

TFF PressInfo: Dangerous reductionism about Ukraine

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“We don’t see things as they are but as we are” – Anais Nin

By Jan Oberg

Lund, Sweden – March 5, 2014

How can we begin to understand the events in Ukraine? Who are the conflict parties and elements?

Here is a quick checklist of 13, just a selection:

1. Ukraine – government (earlier/present), opposition (split), people (19 ethnic groups + Ukrainians abroad). Crimea with its diversity and Ukraine’s relations to neighbours – enough for a doctoral dissertation.

2. Russia – the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Customs Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia and Russia’s more or less strong partners such as Syria.

3. Europe – the EU and European non-EU countries such as e.g. Turkey

4. The United States – the world’s only empire, with a foreign policy establishment in Washington deeply split in neo-conservatives on the one hand and Obama and the rest on the other.

5. China – with an increasing influence worldwide, including conspicuously in Ukraine

6. BRICS – Brasil, Russia, India, China and South Africa

7. World financial organisations such as the International Monetary Fund, IMF, finance institutions, banksters and those others who influence and can ”pay the bills” (and get to own the property) in Ukraine

8. Inter-governmental organisations – the UN, NATO, OSCE and othersRead More »

Ukraine, Crimea, Georgia: The West and Russia

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By Johan Galtung

This article was also published and sent out as TFF PressInfo in March 2014

There is much in a name. Ukraine means borderland.

The position of the extreme West–like US neocons–is clear: get all into NATO, encircling, containing, defeating Russia. Some in Ukraine and Georgia share that goal. The less extreme West would focus on EU membership, both being European countries. Some of them, in turn, might focus on loans as there is much money to be made. Thus, Bosnia-Hercegovina had $9 billion debt before the EU take-over as “high authority”; now $107 billion. “Austerity” around the corner.

The position of Russia as expressed by Putin and Lavrov: no way. Crimea will revert to Russia after it was given to Ukraine in 1954 by Khrushchev–himself born in Kalinovka, Ukraine in 1894, his wife a Ukrainian–possibly mainly for economic reasons as his son at Brown University R.I., USA argues.

However, Ukraine is not only a borderland but also two countries between Poland and Russia. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of 1569 and the Austria-Hungarian Empire once covered most of Ukraine; so did czarist Russia and Soviet Union in their heydays. More importantly, the dividing line of the Roman Empire from 395, confirmed by the schism between Catholic and Orthodox Christianity in 1054, is reflected in Ukraine’s extremely complex history. The result is unmistakable: moving east the Catholic attachment yield to the Orthodox and Ukrainian to Russian. When Poland became a member of EU and even of NATO, the handwriting for Ukraine was on the wall; bringing to mind Polish First Marshal Pilsudski’s Odessa-Black Sea ambitions after WW-I.Read More »

TFF PressInfo: Ukraine – What Would You Like to Know About It?

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By Jan Oberg

I’m no expert on Ukraine, haven’t even visited it. Like millions of other citizens, I rely on media reports to understand at least some of what looks like potentially very serious developments.

Why do I feel so frustrated at what I get? Why do I have so many questions still after weeks of coverage? And how much will fellow-citizens who have just a few minutes per day to acquaint themselves with issues such as this understand (except that Putin is a bad guy)?

It’s a conflict, isn’t it?

I would like to know what are the internal Ukrainian dimensions, the regional East-West European and EU/NATO aspects and what has all this to do with global developments e.g. U.S. foreign policy, NATO’s expansion since the end of the Cold War, strategic interests of Russia and Russia-NATO relations. And where is China and BRICS countries in all this?

Internally, I’d like to learn about the ethnic composition and geography, the role of Russians and – not the least the Jews – and the historic relations between Russia and Ukraine.

In a shorter perspective, when did the West begin to see Ukraine as an interesting country? Why did George Bush Sr. and James Baker promise Mikhail Gorbachev that the West would never expand up to Russia’s border – and anyhow NATO began being an issue in Ukraine in 1995.

It would be great to learn from media about how – as everywhere else – economic mismanagement and overall crisis caused both neo-Nazism, rampant anti-Semitism and general dissatisfaction? And why is it that anti-Semitism is covered so little anywhere in the Western press

How come that important background aspects like these so easily translate into simplifying anti- versus pro-Russian attitudes?Read More »

Q & A with TFF Associate Heela Najibullah

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The daughter of Afghanistan’s last communist president reflects on politics and pluralism in the strife-riven state.

Heela Najibullah was only 10-years-old when her father became the president of Afghanistan. To Heela, Mohammad Najibullah was Aba, father, trying to create reconciliation among an Afghan nation divided between communists and Mujhaideen, religious warriors fighting the Soviet occupation.

Though Heela saw her father working towards an inclusive solution to the Afghan conflict, few in the general population could separate Najibullah the communist from Najibullah the president calling for reconciliation.

In the decades since, however, Najibullah’s image has undergone a transformation. Pictures of a man once tied to communism now hang in people’s cars, windows and shops.

In an interview Al Jazeera, Heela Najibullah talks about her father’s changing image 25 years after the Soviet withdrawal. Continue reading the interview here…

Who understands Ukraine?

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By Jonathan Power

The Western press doesn’t understand Ukraine. That is clear after weeks of reporting the demonstrations. We are given the absolutely minimal background on the history and culture of Ukraine. This is like when writing about the sea to only write about the waves and not the fishes and rocks beneath.

Until relatively recently the national consciousness of Ukrainians rarely surfaced. In the mid-19th century, when it was almost a totally peasant society, they were either subjects of Russia or Austria – and quiet ones. Only gradually did a sense of being Ukrainian develop. Even as part of the Soviet Union nationalists were a small minority. Their best and brightest went to Moscow to study, write, sing, dance or work in government. This is Read More »

Syria – how surprising!

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By Jan Oberg

This Sunday morning, I stumble upon this article on BBC’s homepage – the French foreign minister is “pessimistic” about the negotiations to be held in January in Montreaux, Switzerland about Syria. This is a slightly expanded version on what I jotted down on TFF Facebook:

• Look: First you simplify the conflict beyond recognition, the usual two parties: one side with all the good people and one side with all the bad people – the type of conflict analysis that has proved to never work anywhere (but you learnt nothing from Somalia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya).

• You set up the Friends of Syria – but with such friends, who need an enemy?

• You act as if you have noble motives but never recognize that the French, British and other interventionist and war history in Syria and surroundings is a main reason behind today’s terrible situation. And of course you never mention the words oil and gas.

• You say you can’t talk with the President, a main party to the conflict.

• Then you support some bad guys against some other bad guys and ignore civil society.

• Then you pour in weapons to have the maximum number of people killed and fleeing.

• Then you undermine the only realistic peace effort, that of Kofi Annan, forcing him to resign.

• Then you act surprised that Al-Qaeda & Co. appears on the scene.

• You consistently antagonize Russia which does have an influence on Assad and keep Iran out as a relevant mediator.

• Next, you threaten war on the country but – oh shoot – only France (France, look at this link, is Mr. Fabius an idiot?) and Denmark think it is a good idea.

• Then you get it wrong with the chemical attack, blaming Assad before anyone had investigated it.

• Next you arrange negotiations that ignore 95% of the Syrian people (civil society).

• Next you forget that you should have a cease-fire and some monitoring or ceasefire-keeping mechanism on the ground.

• And you ignore the basic role of thumb that negotiations is the last stage, the result of, comprehensive consultations and dialogues with numerous parties before you go to Montreux.

And then You are surprised and pessimistic that perhaps these negotiations won’t be a success !!

Is that because you really always wanted peace so much? Or are you just systematically behaving as conflict illiterates, doing more harm than good?