Nazionalismi

DECEMBER 1998

The ethnical bomb Nationalism represents the real threat to establishment at the beginning of the third millennium

One, ten, a thousand Kurdistan: that seems to be the destiny of the world in the new millennium.
Wherever one turns one's eyes, sees new nationalism coming up, ever more angry, ever more equipped with weapons and means, ever more decided to conquer a place in the sun.
The ethnical factor, that according to the Marxist doctrine would had been even destined to extinguish, is instead playing an ever more important rôle in the geopolitics, and it's the origin of almost all the turbulences of the post bipolar age.
The Kurdistan case is particularly instructive, since it reveals to us that the nowadays world problems have been latent for centuries, have already surfaced in past ages and then have been temporarily removed to comeback with a high explosive charge.

Forty years ago, the item Kurdistan in the Italian encyclopaedic dictionary says this way: Region, constituted nearly by the mountain part of the eastern Anatolia, enclosing the Tigris and Euphrates upper basins ...... Kurdistan does not constitute a political unit, but it is shared by Turkey, Iran and Iraq: so it was often called the Poland of the Near East .
A process of assimilation, more or less violent in all these three countries, has made The Kurdistan matter practically disappearing from the international scenario .
Really it has never disappeared, since the 'assimilation process' started off ad Ankara, Teheran and Baghdad has not succeeded, and the Kurdish clans, organised following semifeudal models, have gone on having an important rôle in the Middle Eastern scene, destabilising it with their claims, their revolts and their continuous about-turns. The lack of unity, however, has given the possibility to the Kurdish independence cause to progress.
Some formed an alliance with Iran against Iraq, others with Iraq against Iran, some others place themselves at Soviet Union service, in an anti-Turkish performance.
On account of Moscow has worked without any doubt and till the beginning of the 1990s at least, the PKK of Abdullah Ocalan, strictly Marxist-Leninist, which indeed finds itself quite isolated in a galaxy of movements that prefer to attempt to carve out a niche for themselves taking advantage of the Iraq crisis.

But, considering the matter more seriously, the problems seem hard to solve, if not impossible. If the Iraqi Kurdish may hope, by forming an alliance with United States against Saddam Hussein, to cement at least that autonomy (already protected and acknowledged even by UNO) they had conquered after the Kuwait war, for the Turkish, Syrian and Iranian Kurdish the outlooks stand no good.
The idea to sit all round a table and reset the Middle East map, convincing some of the more well armed (and solid) national states to give up a strategic part of their own territory has- evidently -neither rhyme nor reason.
The pressing comeback of the Kurdish problem adds a new unknown factor to the middle east equation, just in the moment when the Palestinian problem seems to be directed to a solution, even if quite slow and troubled.
But, as we have said at the beginning, populations searching a land make them be listened all over the world : and it may be said that the phenomenon manifests itself both in the totalitarian states that stifle any claim for autonomy even with force, and in the democratic States that try to meet all minorities claims and limit repression to the less required.
In Europe we have - at this regard- two classics: the Basque problem and the Kossovo one.
After the re-establishment of democracy, Spain has tried to satisfy the Basque nationalism, which deeply roots into history and has a certain ethnical, cultural and linguistic justification, by according the five provinces of the Northeast a very articulated self government form. A substantial part of the population has accepted that, and tensions have released if compared to the Franco's period. But appetite comes eating, and, while the ETA's unyielding keep on their terrorist campaign, the so called moderates who seat at the government at Vitoria put forward ever more claims. Balancing between the requirements of Madrid that must control the centrifugal forces and those of the nationalists whose final aim is independence, never reached along the course of history seems still more difficult than the squaring of the circle.
The Kossovo events course is opposite: at Tito's times, the Albanians of the provinces enjoyed, even within the totalitarian frame of the Yugoslavia Federative Republic, a certain autonomy. Really, the pot kept on boiling, but someway the tap held. When Yugoslavia collapsed, and the Albanians their turn lifted up their head again hoping to take advantage of the general chaos to better their condition, Milosevic has attempted to solve iron hand the situation, reversing the autonomy statute and imposing a kind of military occupying regime. Maybe, it could work once.
But following the Bosnia intervention, the West could not allow the replay of that tragic event, 200 Kilometres southerner and tried to stop the conflict. If, under the permanent menace of NATO bombing, Serbs will accord enough concessions to put down the Albanian rebellion, is still to be seen, but we must not be under illusion: also in this case we stand at a conflict that roots in history and that finds in the end of this millennium a favourable field to emerge again and that remains almost impossible to solve.

As in the case of Kurdish, there's who makes himself paladin of the rise of a Great Albania, enclosing the same Kossovo and a part of Macedonia. But working to outline again frontiers on an ethnical basis is not less difficult in the Balkans than in Middle East, and - setting apart the questionable ethic valence- no diplomacy seems nowadays available to test its strength against.
An open support to national aspirations of the Kossovo by the holders of the world establishment could, moreover, constitute a quite insidious precedent in at least five continents. Here is it, strictly resumed, a map of the more serious 'national' conflicts we must deal with in the years coming up.
AMERICA. The struggle in the French-speaking Quebec to achieve independence from English-speaking Canada is going on since many ten years. To political and economic problems are added cultural and linguistic problems, hence autonomy has revealed as a not satisfying solution.
At the last referendum, the secessionists of the Parti Québecois were within an ace of victory, and all let believe that, next attempting, they are going to win. The fight, fortunately, is substantially pacific, but the trauma rising from the division of Canada into English and French Canada, in a moment when the corresponding motherlands are closer under the European Unit umbrella, would be anyway very strong.

EUROPE.- Besides the Basque problem and the Ireland one (that it seems, however, it is being solving, almost by a miracle), the powder keg is at East: not only in the ex Yugoslavia, where the 1991 traumatic dissolution has opened up all the old wounds, but in Romania too, where the Hungarian minority of Transilvania is raring to go, searching a greater autonomy, and mainly in Russia, where the successful rebellion of the Chechens could be only the hors d'oeuvre of an ethnical revenge against the Kremlin.
Tartars, Bashkiri, Osseti and other virtually unknown populations that had succeeded in keeping their own identity and which soon or later will not be satisfied anymore of the autonomy, a little fictitious, they enjoy nowadays.
ASIA - In a continent featured by a very tormented history of invasions and contra- invasions, of ethnical and religious conflicts, high density populated and as much volatility, the germ of nationalism find obviously a favourable field. Besides the Kurdish problem, we must measure our strength against the cruel civil war in Sri Lanka, where Singaleses and Tamil fight since twenty years, the rebellion in East Timor (ex Portuguese and catholic) against the Moslem Indonesia, the fight of the Moslems of Mindanao for the secession from Philippine, torments rising from a Multiethnic India, divided into Hindu and Moslems that does not find its balance, with the everlasting struggle of the tribes in the North- Karin, Shan, Kachin, Mon - against the Burma government of Rangoon.
They are mainly endemic conflicts, the West tries to remove, to say it this way, and for, they do not constitute a serious menace to stability.
Things will change if Tibet would explode, occupied by China after the Second World War, anything but resigned to its status.
Also thanks to the Dalai Lama work, the cause of the Tibet has a strong mediatorship in the West and hardly the rest of the world could wait to see a heavy repression by Peking.
AFRICA. Ethnic and tribal conflicts affecting the Dark Continent are so many that is quite impossible to list them. Some are international impact hence they involve the near countries and had required the United Nations intervention, others are circumscribed and involve only single countries.
According to Third Worlders, responsibility of part of these conflicts is to ascribe to Europeans, who in the course of Africa carving up , have outlined frontiers separating tribes that were friend and compelled tribes that were enemies to live together.
Those frontiers, as it is well known, were maintained even during decolonisation, since the new African governments were afraid that- accepting to outline them again- it would open a Pandora's box of fights. If, in some cases, this conservative choose has worked, in other cases it has been ravaging.
As for example, Sudan is torn since thirty years by a cruel conflict between the Arabian north and the Black south, Rwanda, Burundi e Congo have become the permanent set of the Tutsi and Hutu war, Angola is pray of a fight to death war by the coast tribes and internal ones, absurdly disguised as an ideological conflict between the communist MPLA and the west-oriented UNITY.
There was a moment, at the end of the cold war, the West felt the duty to intervene these conflicts for humanitarian reasons: this way rouse the international expedition in Somalia, in Liberia and the UNO's different peacemaking missions in Mozambique, Angola, Rwanda and many other countries.
It was even taken into account, at a certain point, the return to the old mandates, a kind of under guardianship for the most risk countries: but, after the failure in Somalia, this set has been quickly withdrawn, and nowadays the prevailing guideline is to let Africa stew in its own juice.
As long as it does not explode the South Africa mine, where an ethnic conflict among the different Black tribes, the White minority and the Indian one would have fatal consequences - even economic level- all over the world.

Leadership Medica^®