Dear yinka
I realize your response is primarily addressing the Nigerian Biafra civil war, and I have nothing to contribute to that issue. The comparison to Israel, and call on un troops, is something I could very briefly comment on. First of all, Israel fought a war in 1948 when it was created as a state. in the process, it ethnically cleansed Palestine of half of the Palestinians who lived in the country that came to be known as Israel. Secondly, it fought a few times after that, including not only the yom kippur war of 67 but 73 as well, finally settling the borders with Jordan and Egypt. And some with Syria, w the Golan heights.
So the fighting with its arab neighbors was not a single episode, and it yielded a settlement thanks to u.s. money with the two I mentioned. Palestinians got next to nothing from the settlements since a 2 state solution was supposedly to be worked out. Relations w Syria and lebabon remained relatively hostile. I don't see any good lessons from any of this.
My real comment here is on expectations of the u.n. most people seem to imagine there is something like an international community, housed in the u.n., with its own army. That isn't the case. There are only national armies, and in some cases the various nations of the world are willing to lend the u.n. forces, called peacekeepers, at a price. Poor countries like Burundi get a good enough stipend per soldier to make it worth their while to send them off to places like Somalia.
Those UN Peacekeepers are costly, and the UN pays for peacekeeping operations with the dues paid by member states, most significantly the US. If the US, or the security council, says no, then there are no peacekeepers. The security council can send peacekeepers only if those states with veto power agree to it.
They never end conflicts: they send in troops, generally when the warring factions agree, so as to control the spaces between the warring factions, like the boundary on the Golan heights between Syria and Israel, or in Cyprus between turks and greeks.
The largest peacekeeping force is monusco, i.e. the Congolese troops, which work alongside the Congolese army to try to tamp down the militias' fighting.
ken
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/
From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Olayinka Agbetuyi <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Monday 1 January 2018 at 07:40
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - No, Jonathan Wouldn't Have Been Better!
Ken:
You wrote about your discomfiture about Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and sunday oppression. This was a drama whose script was rehearsal-written with the 1967 Arab Israeli Yom Kippur war. I believe this is a case where Nigeria (warts and all) stands as a shining example to the international community.
After Nigeria's first civil war if the military leaders of the federal side had encouraged a policy (or looked the other way) while emissaries and agents of the emirs grabbed Igbo lands in the east as spoils of war while the Igbo nation was down on its knees we would not have the Nigeria we have today would we? All the conquerors would need to do is use instruments of the state to keep them perpetually on their knees. This is where credit must be given to whom its due that the Gowons and Obasonjos (despite their human inadequacies and lapses that led to the war in the first place) were able to enforce this policy.
The world has a supervening supranational institution (formed at the behest of exchange of letters between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud among others as I maintained years ago). That this body could turn a blind eye and allow Israel to profit fron naked aggression laid the ground work for the crisis in that region today. A situation facilitated by a disguised Arab hatred in that body. It is not too late for hat body to make it clear that it would march in with an overwhelming supra national force to dislodge the Israeli invaders from their forced acquisition and enshrine in its charter that exchange of lands can be secured ONLY through negotiations. There all Israeli sabre rattling will end. This is where the manner of ending Nigeria's first civil war exemplifies Nigeria as a nation worthy of emulation by the international community to upgrade its human index.
The other matter which I wanted to comment up in a few weeks ago but which my existential predicament almost shut down was the ordeal of my friend (Farooq) at the Nigerian embassy in Georgia. What I wanted to say then is that he should consider himself lucky for being a Nigerian which shortened his irdeal to 7 hrs. (I know there is room for improvement in all situations)
I know the intimate details of someone in a similar situation to his in Her Majestys passport office in London ( no apocryphal tale intended here) who wanted to procure a travel document (one day passport renewal) still waiting the fourth year and may have to wait 7 years (not 7 hrs) on the bogus spurious excuse of identity checks. His only crime: member of the minority community. He is apparently one of the victims of reactions to the glut of EU influx which led predictably and deservedly to Brexit.
It is doubtful whether any of the officers acting in the disguised hatred couched in the language of identity checks will ever be brought to justice since they will plead to be only carrying out orders and doing their duties at a time when Her Majestys spouse was acting as personal chauffeur to a visiting black American president Her Majesty is preparing to welcome a black daughter in law into the fold and Prince Harry is getting his hustings as a journalist in a radio interview with Barack Obama: in short at a time when the Royal Family is putting its best foot forward to demonstrate leadership by example that the age of bigotry is over.
It all goes to show that sometimes when there are problems it isn't always the lesdership that is to blame but the followership themselves as in the celebrated case of the bòok ' Ordinary Men" on the Holocaust.
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------
From: Kenneth Harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
Date: 01/01/2018 03:05 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - No, Jonathan Wouldn't Have Been Better!
This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (harrow@msu.edu) Add cleanup rule | More info
Gloria is right that no enmity need be eternal. In fact, unless there is an economic motive, enmity will dissipate quickly. My own view.
As for the analogy between jews and germans, that doesn't quite work for me. The germans with whom the jews made up were not Nazis, but the opposite: those who outlawed Nazism in all forms, down to this day. And especially those who sided with the enemies of the Nazis.
The jews who made up, too, were not really The Jews but Israelis who accepted reparations, not quite the same as making up.
Most jews I knew when I grew up after WWII hated the germans, refused to buy german products, like VWs, and certainly never went to Germany. We are now 3 generations after that day, and not only has that hatred weakened, especially for the younger generation, the germans themselves have become the model nation that has apologized for its holocaust. If you go to berlin you will be impressed, or even overwhelmed, by the monuments, the tokens to the past, the reminders, and above all, the deep signs of apologizing for that past.
The Israelis are no where close to apologizing for the occupation, the slaughtering of Palestinians in gaza, the new settlements, the expulsions and ethnic cleanings, the wall, the prison abuse etc.
It is not easy for jews like myself to see in Israel, what had once been the great golden hope of the jewish people, turn into the oppressive state.
Will this change one day? Maybe not. When the invading Europeans took the native people's lands and put them onto reservations, there was no basic change in policy. There have been vague gestures toward apologies, but no truth and reconciliation commission, no resolution to the miserable conditions on all too many reservations, except for those w casinos or minerals.
ken
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/
From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Emeagwali, Gloria (History)" <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Sunday 31 December 2017 at 20:34
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - No, Jonathan Wouldn't Have Been Better!
Well the Nazis connote genocide,
death camps, gold filling extraction and a host of despicable actions.As I said in another list, if the Jews can make up with the Germans, then they could certainly come to an agreement with the Palestinians. But that is a stray point. The real issue here is about politician s and the lies they weave. Few can be trusted. You can only think in relative terms at the moment of voting.
Who would have thought that Alassane Ouattara would turn out to be such a lousy, avaricious,ungrateful President but he did. Gbagbo's friend
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Professor of History
History Department
Central Connecticut State University
1615 Stanley Street
New Britain. CT 06050
www.africahistory.net
www.gloriaemeagwali.com
www.ccsu.edu/afstudy/archive.html
Chief Editor- "Africa Update"
www.vimeo.com/user5946750/videos
Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries on
Africa and the African Diaspora
8608322815 Phone
8608322804 Fax
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara <chidi.opara@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, December 31, 2017 4:01:16 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - No, Jonathan Wouldn't Have Been Better!
"No Nazi invocation, I plead." (Moderator)
Why not, if within context and helps to illuminate viewpoints?
CAO.
--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fgroups.google.com%2Fgroup%2FUSAAfricaDialogue&data=01%7C01%7Cemeagwali%40ccsu.edu%7C4f11c13296aa40221aac08d550a6752d%7C2329c570b5804223803b427d800e81b6%7C0&sdata=eR0VjQCiIDR%2F%2Fi4NzhKlaaKuGYKCahY2TtuilrcIpfo%3D&reserved=0
Early archives at https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.utexas.edu%2Fconferences%2Fafrica%2Fads%2Findex.html&data=01%7C01%7Cemeagwali%40ccsu.edu%7C4f11c13296aa40221aac08d550a6752d%7C2329c570b5804223803b427d800e81b6%7C0&sdata=NtzG%2FoD2wDh%2FXblBG2DvMqXKj6pC35E9hhDyLeBKBoc%3D&reserved=0
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgroups.google.com%2Fd%2Foptout&data=01%7C01%7Cemeagwali%40ccsu.edu%7C4f11c13296aa40221aac08d550a6752d%7C2329c570b5804223803b427d800e81b6%7C0&sdata=a%2FzISEhhpsgStE0cw3Y%2BxUm%2BDVmKeDCau2H%2FK0oIt%2FI%3D&reserved=0.
--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
No comments:
Post a Comment