Bangladesh, Nepal, and Myanmar's Rohingya in the news

The region that contains Bangladesh, Nepal, and the western portion of Myanmar does not pretend to be influential in today's world. But news from these countries has filtered out this past week and is worth noting.


Nepal is a mountainous country where the Himalaya mountains have formed from the Indian tectonic plate pushing into the Eurasian plate. Bangladesh is nearly all a low level delta from rivers running from the Himalayas to the ocean. The Western region of Myanmar is non-descript, mainly low level hills. Graphic from rochester.edu

Nepal suffered a major earthquake and a set of aftershocks, killing nearly 8000 of its citizens. With steep terrain, and limited infrastructure, it is a stiff blow to the country's prospects in the near term.


While a disaster, it may be one that nonetheless pulls its citizens together. Soldiers, citizens, and the government are all working with the same goal of recovering from this major setback. Photo from www.travelweek.ca

The Rohingya of Myanmar are a Muslim minority in an otherwise Buddhist Myanmar. This ethnic group has little power, faces an indifferent, if not hostile government, and neighbors thus are allowed to act aggressively toward these people. The Rohingya number nearly 1 million, are mainly agrarian, have their own language, and isolated by modern borders from other Muslim populations, namely Bangladesh.

In an article two years ago from the Christian Science Monitor, we read that some Buddhists in Bangladesh are leaving that country and being resettled in Rohingya land. Another element of harassment and oppression of the Rohingya. The Myanmar government and Buddhist leaders contend that the Rohingya are relatively new to the region and have no long-standing claim on the land. The long running strife is messy, violent, and oppressive with diminished opportunities for education and growth within the Rohingya community. While primarily a reflection of mismatched borders and intertwined populations with Bangladesh, the issue as found elsewhere is how minority populations are protected by law and treated equally. When Myanmar and Bangladesh both struggle with poverty and a mixed record of governance, the festering continues.


Border guards in Bangladesh refuse entry to Rohingya refugees from Myanmar in November 2012. Teatree was moved and sobered by the pain on this man's face, frustrated no doubt in his attempts to find refuge for his family. Photo from ipsnews.ndet

In the past few days, both impoverished Bangladeshi and Rohingya have taken to the seas looking for refuge. Malaysia and other destination countries are not keen to take them in, and so another cauldron of suffering and displacement simmers.


The enclave of Rohingya's is shown outlined in red. One can imagine a long and perilous voyage by sea along the hostile coast of Myanmar, with the hope that Malaysia, a fellow Muslim country, might take them in. In the past weeks, Thailand, long a first stop for refugees, cracked down on the activity, forcing other boat people to travel further southeast to Malaysia or Indonesia. They have not been welcomed in either country. An article from Australia's Broadcasting Company (ABC) has further details.

And then perhaps most ominously, there is recent violence in Bangladesh with a specific theme. Three bloggers expressing criticism of aspects of Islam have been killed since the first of the year. A CNN article reports on the latest, "Ananta Bijoy Das, 32, was killed Tuesday morning as he left his home on his way to work at a bank, police in the northeastern Bangladeshi city of Sylhet said.

Four masked men attacked him, hacking him to death with cleavers and machetes, said Sylhet Metropolitan Police Commissioner Kamrul Ahsan. The men then ran away. Because of the time of the morning when the attack happened, there were few witnesses. But police say they are following up on interviewing the few people who saw the incident.

"It's one after another after another," said Imran Sarker, who heads the Blogger and Online Activists Network in Bangladesh. "It's the same scenario again and again. It's very troubling."

Das' death was at least the third this year of someone who'd posted pieces online critical of Islam. In each case, the attacks were carried out publicly on city streets. In March, Washiqur Rahman, 27, was hacked to death by two men with knives and meat cleavers just outside his house as he headed to work at a travel agency in the capital, Dhaka.

In February, a Bangladesh-born American blogger, Avijit Roy, was similarly killed with machetes and knives as he walked back from a book fair in Dhaka.

The three victims are hardly the only ones who have paid a steep price for their views. In the last two years, several bloggers have died, either murdered or under mysterious circumstances. In 2014, Reporters Without Borders reported that a group calling itself Defenders of Islam in Bangladesh had published a "hit list" of writers it saw as opposing Islam. "They listed 84 bloggers, mostly secularists. They listed 84 of them," said blogger Asif Mohiuddin, whose name was on the list. "Nine of them are already killed and many of the [others] were attacked."

The killings highlight the ignorance and intolerance sheltered within Islam's followers, not just the jihadists, and the question again becomes, what are "normal" Muslims to do.


There are no doubt many Muslims who deplore the killings of these activists, and take a step of resistance by, in this case, publicly mourning one of the victims. Photo from Agence France-Presse

But the young, righteous, and violent Islamists are unrepentent. And the future for tolerance in yet another Muslim country is now shaken.

Violent jihad strikes hard in the new year

While the world was justifiably immersed in the violent and tragic events in France this past week, the Boko Haram jihadists in Africa have surpassed the France toll and even their own bloody history, with new large scale killings and mayhem in northern Nigeria. Some observers are starting to characterize Boko Haram as having established a defacto African Islamic caliphate - a mini-ISIS state if you will - across those arid lands.


This graphic was developed for a September 2014 story. In the last three months of 2014, and indeed this past week, Boko Haram has expanded its control of territory and its ability to raid in the face of the Nigerian military. Graphic from http://www.digitaljournal.com

Boko Haram is accused of returning and killing up to 2000 within the last few days, in the town of Baga on Nigeria's eastern border with Chad. A deed that follows their overrunning of a military base in the same town the week before.

Baga, the scene of a Boko Haram raid on a Nigerian military base in the first week of January 2015, has since borne the savagery of a massacre of its residents by the same jihadists the following week.

The list grows and grows

Boko Haram - up to 2000 civilians killed last week, military base overrun the previous week. The group has also abducted hundreds of schoolgirls in multiple events over the past year, with the apparent best response that the West can muster (not to mention Nigeria's authorities) is a #Bring Back our Girls media campaign.


While social media was stirred by the "bring back our girls" campaign, complete with Hollywood celebrities (to wit, Anne Hathaway and husband) and politicians holding posters, it is clear that more than posters is needed to change the trend in Nigeria ... Photo from www.usmagazine.com

While Boko Haram has killed up to 10,000 civilians in 2014, that is Syria's civilian death toll in just the past two months alone, according to a report in the New York Times.

Pakistan's Tehrik-e-Taliban which killed over 130 students in Peshawar as 2014 drew to a close, is now issuing new threats to kill more.

Al Shabab's attack in a Kenyan mall last year ended with 67 dead; a bus attack this past November ended with 28 non-Muslim passengers separated out and shot; and again in December, another 36 non-Muslim quarry workers were separated out and executed.

And now in the past few days, the radical Islamic violence has hit France, where a "mere" 20 deaths, including three jihadists and three police, have captured the world's attention.


French security forces storm Jewish grocery in the second and related attack in Paris. Here 4 hostages were killed by a jihadist, and one policewoman the previous day, before the French police moved in killing the attacker holding hostages inside. Previously, as well, well covered, two jihadists stormed a newspaper building, executing 9 citizens, mainly journalists, along with two policemen attempting to stop the attackers.

Time to sharpen our vocabulary, even as a backlash forms

This is quickly becoming the issue for 2015 - how do we talk more clearly about jihadists, terrorists, extremists, and probe more seriously as to why the majority of the brutal and unrelenting string of atrocities stem from individuals referring to the Koran as their guide. It is important because this stream of violence is beginning to fuel a backlash across the Western world that can easily spill over into a variety of xenophobic themes, and hostility to numerous minorities.

In Germany, for example, a movement called Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West) is swelling - with immigrants or at least lenient immigration policies the target, and anti-Muslim immigration in particular. Far broader and less extreme than the vitriol of Nazi-skinheads, the Pegida movement nonetheless provides shelter for these Nazi remnants, as well as other far-right groups espousing various strains of ethnic purity and hostility towards minorities.

In France, the National Front Party headed by Jean-Marie Le Pen,long been considered extreme with its emphasis on tight immigration controls, is suddenly becoming more appealing. In a recent New Yorker article, Jean Marie states, “It was to be expected. This attack is probably the beginning of the beginning. It’s an episode in the war that is being waged against us by Islamism. The blindness and deafness of our leaders, for years, is in part responsible for these kinds of attacks.”


Jean-Marie Le Pen, head of France's National Front party. Photo from the New Yorker, in an article written by Philip Gourevitch, a journalist who wrote extensively about the Rwanda massacre in 1994.

All across Europe, parties promoting narrow brands of nationalism and ethnic boundaries are challenging the underlying sentiments that have guided the European Union's growth. The latest French attacks deal a double blow - against civil society directly, and against tolerance and solidarity across borders indirectly.


A German anti-Islam rally attended by 15,000 in Dresden in mid-December, though authorities and counter demonstrators all are challenging the group's premise. Photo by Jens Meyer/AP Photo in Bloomberg News article.

It is late, but there is still time

A little mentioned detail regarding the police officer, Ahmed Merabet, killed point-blank by one of the jihadists attacking the Charlie Hebdo news building was that he was a Muslim. The slain officer's brother Malek, lamented "He was killed by people who pretend to be Muslims. They are terrorists, that's it."

And another young Muslim from Mali distinguished himself during the second jihadist attack on a Jewish grocery.


Lassana Bathily, an employee at the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket in Vincennes,and a "practicing Muslim," helped guide a group of hostages into a downstairs walk-in freezer while gunman Amedy Coulibaly was preparing to kill them. According to reports, he escaped the building via a freight elevator and ran outside, where he assisted police by describing the location of the freezer where hostages were hiding. Photo from www.telegraph.co.uk

Still, there seems to be a shrill and repeated insistence among some leaders after every jihadist attack that "Islam is a religion of peace." It is to the point when that statement is repeated, that one can assume there must have just been another attack in the name of defending the Prophet, even if the details have not yet emerged.

And while it is understandable to refer to individuals killing in the name of Allah as "lone wolfs" "deranged", etc, one can't ignore that after 9/11, hundreds of Muslims were dancing in the streets in East Jerusalem. As one Israeli opinion piece noted after this past week's events, that was not limited to a reaction against US foreign policy. "Not all Muslims are terrorists, but almost all terrorists are Muslims," wrote Abdulrahman al-Rashed, the former general manager of the Al-Arabiya television news channel in the important Arabic newspaper Asharq al-Awsat. This is, in brief, Europe's big dilemma. Millions of Muslims have nothing to do with terror but, according to surveys, hundreds of thousands support jihad, suicide bombings and even the Islamic State." (noted in Ynet News, Ben-Dror Yemini 1-8-15)


Mr Al-Rashed believes there is an opening in the Arab media to tell both sides (and an opening then that must surely be seized). Photo from the New York Times,

Even Egypt's new President, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi remarked, "I am referring here to the religious clerics. We have to think hard about what we are facing — and I have, in fact, addressed this topic a couple of times before. It's inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma (Islamic world) to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible!

"That thinking — I am not saying 'religion' but 'thinking' — that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the years, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world. It's antagonizing the entire world!

"Is it possible that 1.6 billion people (Muslims) should want to kill the rest of the world's inhabitants — that is 7 billion — so that they themselves may live? Impossible! ... I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution. You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move … because this umma is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost — and it is being lost by our own hands."


Egyptian President al-Sisi heads the largest Arab nation in terms of population. Egypt is also burdened with a history of hosting extremist groups as the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, and al-Qaeda which at the moment is headed up by a former Egyptian doctor, Ayman Al-Zawahiri. Photo from www.ndtv.com

France's President Hollande has declared war on "radical Islam." Teatree isn't sure what that will look like - perhaps it will be a coordinated effort to marginalize or even arrest inflammatory Imams - the same situation in Pakistan that seems to be avoided. This seems a good place to start.

Transitioning from what we're against to include what we're for, France's Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared, “It is a war against terrorism, against jihadism, against radical Islam, against everything that is aimed at breaking fraternity, freedom, solidarity ...”

Similarly, UK's Prime Minister Cameron was quoted months ago in a Daily Mail article,"Muslim clerics in the UK who inflame terrorism by denouncing free speech, equality and democracy will be opposed in a ‘muscular’ new defence of ‘British values’, David Cameron has pledged.


The North London Central Mosque has gained a reputation in the U.K as a center of radical preaching. Photo from muslimweb.over-blog.com

In a powerful intervention clearly aimed mainly at ‘preachers of hate’, the Prime Minister says the failure to stand up to such firebrands has ‘allowed extremism – both the violent and non-violent kind – to flourish’. It is time to stop being ‘squeamish about Britishness’ and tell everyone who lives here that refusing to accept British laws and the British way of life is ‘not an option’, Mr Cameron argues."

There is another issue of concern - symbolism and dress. While this concern seems somewhat foreign in the US, Germany has long banned the use of any Nazi symbolism in its de-nazification efforts, and the burqa has already been banned in France.

Burqa and full body robes were banned in France in 2010, though Teatree is not sure of how it is enforced or current status. Photo by Alexandre Renahy / JerryCom / Pix Palace

To take the other side, many felt the lash of Charlie Hebdo's irreverent cartoons and consider them unnecessarily provocative. And freedom of speech and expression finds limits with the example of falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater.

Today's marches across France to stand up against extremism, but more importantly for tolerance and liberty was inspiring, and important as the crowds were said to have totaled more than 3.7 million. From today's events, Teatree believes citizens everywhere need to be more active in pushing for the values we hold dear, if for no other reason than a lack of forceful response will lead to more violence and an even more chaotic backlash.


Estimates of over 3.7 million people gathered across France in solidarity against violent jihadism, 1.6 million in Paris alone. Now the hard work begins. Photo from english.manoramaonline.com

For Teatree, "jihadism" will be his term for describing the nihilistic, violent mayhem wrought by extremists in the name of Islam. Teatree, will nonetheless, consider cynically any studied attempt to ignore inflammatory language and preaching (preachers of hate)of violence in mosques. Bland statements such as "Islam is a religion of peace" are already, to this blogger, considered mere bromides that at times seem deliberate in order to sidestep more serious consideration.

If world leaders do not step up with proactive, serious (yes, and hopefully thoughtful) efforts to degrade and reject this growing stream of deadly jihadist teaching, there will likely be much less constructive backlash in the years to come.

Now it's the UAE ...

We'll make it quick - another post on the spreading conflicts across the Arab world. This time one of the small conservative monarchies that usually receives little attention, the United Arab Emirates, is involved.

Where is the UAE?

Answer, it is in a rather delicate location, ie. a key location, making up the peninsula of land that separates the Persian Gulf from the Indian Ocean. Which means the UAE sits with a bird's eye view of over 35% of the world's sea-borne oil traffic (in a rather unstable region to say the least).

The UAE, like a thorn poised to puncture a balloon loaded with oil ... Though if one looks closely at the map, the actual point of the thorn is an exclave of Oman. Graphic from wikipedia.

Iran, all the land to the right in this photo, has long declared its intentions to sink a few of those oil tankers traveling through the narrow Strait of Hormuz, if it felt threatened. Photo from www.infowars.com

Oil tankers threading through a number of military vessels. Teatree isn't sure if this congestion is normal, or from one of many tension-filled spats in the recent past. Photo from www.newsbomb.gr

Wikipedia states "UAE's total population was 9.2 million; 1.4 million Emirati citizens and 7.8 million expatriates." Somewhere close to the truth, though estimates range from 3.8 million native Arabic speaking citizens and the balance are foreign workers. The point is that there are substantially more non-native dwellers - a situation that is alleviated by the fact that citizens and residents alike in the small set of emirates enjoy a wealthy income average.

Established in late 1971, the country is a federation of seven emirates (equivalent to principalities). Each emirate is governed by a hereditary emir who jointly form the Federal Supreme Council, the highest legislative and executive body in the country. One of the emirs is selected as the President of the United Arab Emirates. The constituent emirates are Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah, and Umm al-Quwain. The capital is Abu Dhabi, which is one of the two centers of commercial and cultural activities, together with Dubai.

Abu Dhabi and Dubai are the UAE's two major cities - it is rather hard to believe the wealth and commercial buildings that have been built up in this small country. Photo from www.sohbetna.com

Where are a lot of those workers from? Again from Wikipedia, "UAE and India are each other's main trading partners, with the latter having many of its citizens working and living in the former."

Actually an interesting picture that shows ethnic UAE arabs and many Indian office workers. They were evacuating the breathtaking high towers, after some earthquake tremors in 2013. Photo from www.daijiworld.com

What's UAE been up to?

Soberingly enough, last week the UAE, in partnership with Egypt who provided support from its western air bases, sent fighter jets to the North African coast, to bomb Islamist positions surrounding Libya's main airport in Tripoli. Egypt and the UAE, and one supposes other Arab nations are acting on their own to support a faction in Libya more to their liking than Islamist militias.

A UAE F-16 fighter jet in an unrelated photo, but likely the model used in action in Libya. Photo from Canada's National Post

Libya, of course, was the showcase three years ago for Western powers on how to depose a ruthless dictator Colonel Ghadaffi and usher in an Arab version of democracy all with relatively risk free cruise missiles and bombers. An all-important endorsement at the time of the Arab League for brief, limited intervention was deemed and trumpeted as essential, and expectations were that Libya could steadily move forward with representative elections. However, as the US and Western allies' narratives of smart diplomacy and international coalitions as the correct approach began to diverge while the continued conflicts and fighting between militias escalated, a vacuum of leadership and power emerged and deepened, complete with dueling parliaments. Now,the UAE and Egypt have opted to go it alone in support of their own interests in Egypt's neighbor, not even bothering to communicate with the Western nations ahead of time.

A very cleaned up map of Libya, that nonetheless hints at some of the ancient ethnic lines running through this artificially constructed nation-state. Graphic from www.telegraph.co.uk

Smoke rises from the area near Libya's main airport in Tripoli after UAE airstrikes in support of a Libyan General's forces fighting Islamist militias. (However, in spite of the airstrikes, Islamists - under the banner of "Dawn of Libya" - still took control of the airport) For an illuminating article, read this by The Guardian newspaper last week.

A fair number of airplanes now sit on Tripoli airport tarmac, damaged by fighting. Photo from Reuters

That's it. Libya is splintering, many sides are available to be backed, the UAE has felt compelled to participate, and Western powers are sidelined across the region, as the Arab world unravels.

ISIS, boundaries, and porous borders

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, the Middle East was a place of calm and brotherly-love. All the boundaries between nations accurately reflected ethnic concentrations and had done so since ages past (except for the arbitrary borders of a vast region on the Mediterranean sea occupied by the warlike Zionist entity).

Peaceful and wise governance could be found everywhere – Saddam Hussein did not gas his own people in the village of Halabja in 1988, he did not invade and terrorize Kuwait in 1991, he did not slaughter over 100,000 Shiites in the aftermath of that war that didn't happen, he was not a major funding source for the families of brave Palestinian suicide martyrs fighting against the lone evil in the region – aggressive, oppressive Israel - and finally he did not send rockets into said Israel during the 1991 war that did not happen.

But in 2003, US forces at the order of President George W Bush and his Vice President Cheney, invaded and occupied the long-time secure and sensible boundaries of Iraq where Kurds, Sunnis and Shias lived in geographically connected harmonious bliss, ruled by what might be conceded the firm but fatherly hand of Saddam Hussein. And since that single unprecedented day, and those dreadful years following till 2009 when Bush left office, that peaceful land has not been able to recover, nor any of the nations of the Arab world. Indeed, across all the Arab lands, little divisions have sprung up and coalesced, through no fault of any, into extremist factions of various kinds, where not one existed before (except those groups of would-be martyrs who were only seeking to right the wrongs perpetrated by Israeli occupation of the sacred-since-ages-past, inviolate land of Palestine).

And thus IS (ISIS, ISIL), the most evil result of them all, has surfaced – the consummate end product of the Bush-Cheney imperialist adventure.


The new Islamic State's caliphate - sacred national Arab boundaries be damned. Graphic from jackspotpourri.blogspot.com

The atrocities of IS speak volumes and are clear enough for anyone who wants to take note. Massacres, crucifixions, torture, rape, beheadings, kidnappings of women for wedding prizes - all are amply reported on, though somewhat jarring to reconcile with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (now calling himself “Caliph Ibrahim”) invitation to Muslims to migrate to his land. Though the kindly call for doctors and engineers to build the caliphate has been extended, as noted in an article by the UK Daily Mail, "not a single Muslim country has seen a mass exodus of people keen to live under his version of sharia."


The latest Islamic psychopath, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (aka "Caliph Ibrahim”) apparently likes his Rolex ... Photo from news.nationalpost.com

National Arabic boundaries

If nothing else, the IS caliphate shows the myth of secure and ethnically sensible boundaries in the Arab world. This group doesn't care, and it scorns the placement of borders by European powers nearly 100 years previous. Yet the larger story is that everywhere in the world, borders have been placed arbitrarily, the result of conflicts or negotiation, or some combination thereof, and has little to do with how the modern governments of any region decide to work with neighbors - friendly or hostile.

Regarding the Middle East, one can start with the Ottoman Empire that was essentially broken up at the end of World War I. The first two maps below show the Middle East in rapid change from 1914 to 1940, while the third map highlights the one and only set of borders (of Israel) that is intolerable to all the other entities whose borders were arbitrarily drawn at the same time ...


The Arab world - before World War I. Graphic from lostislamichistory.com (which is also a very worthwhile website)



The Arab world - before World War II. Graphic from lostislamichistory.com


Yes, that thorn in the Arab side has just as long a history of existence as do virtually all the boundaries of its neighbors. Graphic from forthegrandchildren.blogspot.com


National boundaries today. Graphic from www.hotelsinthemiddleeast.com

So the boundaries of the Middle East nations are suddenly being exposed as fragile and arbitrary as they are - the real challenge is governance. Have the Kurds, based on their relatively sound governance in the midst of a broken Iraq, suddenly found an opening to assert their own entity?

Just for fun, here's how a map of the Middle East might look if it were more representative of major ethnic groupings. Click on the image to see a larger, more readable version.


Ralph Peters, a former United States Army Lieutenant Colonel drew a map in 2006, which created quite an outcry at the time. But note, according to a post at www.geographictravels.com "how the proposal for Syria mirrors what is going on now with the Kurds going their own way and the coastal area becoming an Alawite enclave aligned with Hizbollah in Lebanon." Graphic from www.geographictravels.com

Porous borders

We've talked at length in various posts about refugees and internally displaced peoples around the world and in trouble spots. But the borders Teatree speaks of is in regard to the many young ISIS jihadists from across Europe who have gone to the Middle East, gaining expertise in killings and mayhem, and who also have passports to return home. While ISIS currently terrorizes the lands of Syria and Iraq (both likely to disintegrate), the concern of Western and indeed other Muslim nations' intelligence agencies is how to track hundreds of fighters who hold the option of returning to their own lands over the next few years.

British Islamists protest outside the French Embassy in London January 12, 2013. Reuters. Photo from rt.com


Possible returnees by the numbers. Graphic from USNews.com


In the UK, according to an article in www.jihadwatch.org, "Communities have been bombarded with the posters, which read: “˜You are entering a Sharia-controlled zone ““ Islamic rules enforced.” The bright yellow messages daubed on bus stops and street lamps have already been seen across certain boroughs in London and order that in the “˜zone” there should be “˜no gambling”, “˜no music or concerts”, “˜no porn or prostitution”, “˜no drugs or smoking” and “˜no alcohol”." Photo from www.jihadwatch.org

The cauldron continues to roil, the heat is still rising.

Islamic extremist attacks in Africa bookend the past week

First, there was the horrific attack in Kenya's capital city on Saturday, September 21. A shopping mall targeted by al-Shabaab extremists, the carnage ending four days later with nearly 70 dead and 200 wounded. The coverage was extensive in the world press highlighting Kenya's visibility as the economic hub of East Africa. What also stood out in the attack is that while al-Shabaab took credit for the bloodshed, they had recruited ideologues from many countries, including the West.

Eight days later, Sunday, September 29, another Islamic extremist group, the notorious Boko Haram (fluidly meaning "Western education forbidden") attacked a college in Nigeria's troubled northeast state of Yobe, killing at least 50 students, many in their sleep. In this instance, the coverage will likely be much briefer and certainly less intense.

At the risk of sounding like a drum once again, the common thread, in Teatree's opinion, is the vigorous, violent religious-directed action of Islamic fundamentalists. It seems like many years ago (in the 1990s) that the world heard a host of excuses for the first attacks on Western targets - "it is what happens when the West ignores the plight of the poor, it is because of the West's oppression of the rest of the world, it is the presence of Israel and its occupation of Palestine," etc. Over time, with fellow Muslims taking the brunt of the bloodshed, these rationales have fallen away. What remains is an extremist vision of utopia - Sharia law - and the use of force to achieve it, and an equally bewildering hesitance in so much of the world to focus on it clearly.

Westgate shopping mall, Nairobi, Kenya

The attack of the Westgate mall was horrific, though what stands out most in Teatree's mind is the incredible acts of bravery by outmatched police and volunteers to lead individuals out of harms way through the corridors of the mall itself. Muslim, Christian, Hindi, others all helping each other. There is something so powerful to witness bravery in action, then and there, when so much is on the line.

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Rescue efforts broke past racial space, and human bonds emphasized. Photo from tv.msnbc.com by Amanda Sakuma

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Photo from Yahoo news, by Jason Straziuso

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We've learned that this individual in the police force is a Muslim who is credited with many acts of bravery and compassion. Photo from nydaily news by Philip Caulfield

Photo from terrorfreesomalia.blogspot by rahm Warsame

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Likewise, outgunned plainsclothes police and detectives - all races - worked together in the fluid situation. www.dailymail.co.uk

Later, there always plenty of stories and analysis, much true, much simply repeating stereotypes. The New York Times captured one thought well - that while Kenya showcases much of what is modern, its depth of security is overstated. While the "wananchi" shown, there remains the spectacle of rivalry between police and security forces. And all that overshadowed by the spectacle of Kenya's President and Vice President both facing charges over their influence in violence during the 2007 elections when 1,200 people died and more than 500,000 were uprooted from their homes.

College of Agriculture, Yobe state, Nigeria.

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The northeast provinces of Nigeria have for more than a decade been battered by a series of Islamic extremist attacks, the local Boko Haram demanding a state of their own, framed in Sharia law. This latest incident was in the state of Yobe. Graphic from www.rte.ie

In the comparatively sparse reports on Sunday's attack, up to 50 mainly male students at a local college were killed in their sleep by West Africa's premiere jihadists. Very few if any pictures have turned up yet - a testimony to the difficulty of media to get to these sites, and perhaps not the urgency ... As we read in allAfrica.com, "Residents believe the attack has the imprimatur of the extremist Boko Haram sect which has in the past three years slaughtered thousands of innocent Nigerians in attacks on schools, places of worship, media establishments and security installations.

Academic activities only resumed last week in schools across Yobe state following 10 weeks of closure after the brazen attack by members of the violent sect on two secondary schools, which led to the death of 29 students and three teachers. The state government ordered the closure of all schools in the northeastern state after the attack by members of the sect on Government Secondary School, Mamudo. But Government Secondary School, Mamudo, remained closed for another two weeks for the conclusion of ongoing reconstruction work in the school, the state Commissioner of Education, Mohammed Lamin said.

The Boko Haram sect had on Wednesday and Thursday murdered at least 27 persons in two separate attacks in the border towns of Borno State, government officials and security sources said. ..."

July 6, 2013, 30 killed in a Boko Haram attack on Mamudo Secondary School

In the latest AP report, "The extremists rode into the college in two double-cabin pickup all-terrain vehicles and on motorcycles, some dressed in Nigerian military camouflage uniforms, a surviving student, Ibrahim Mohammed, told the AP. He said they appeared to know the layout of the college, attacking the four male hostels but avoiding the one hostel reserved for women. "We ran into the bush, nobody is left in the school now," Mohammed said. Almost all those killed were Muslims, as is the college's student body, Usman said.

Much was made over al-Shabaab gunmen in the Kenya attack asking people if they were Muslim or not, and if so, they could flee. Yet in this tragedy in Nigeria, with no westerners around, Muslims were given no pass, rather were focused targets to make the extremists point (men, not women - who will find their rightful place later). And in fact, while western victims provoke a large international outcry and coverage, it has been the Muslim populations around the trouble-spots of the world who have borne the brunt of Islamic extremists.

As with Kenya, secondary reports just now starting to filter in include some disturbing news of a system out of whack. The necessary investment and discipline in providing security is simply not reliable or sufficient. In this case, the Nigerian government had promised police protection for schools if they would reopen after the July attacks. While the schools did, apparently the police protection did not come through, at least at this school.

In any case, it seems to Teatree that a struggle for Islam itself is underway - it is the central question underlying both the visible attacks on westerners and on the more frequent and less covered attacks on fellow believers of Allah. From recurring unrest in Tunisia, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, and even Sudan itself, the internal struggle rages on this continent, and on into the Middle East.

Sri Lanka's Tamils bolster presence with election win

In searching through an unusually bleak variety of news items this week, an election in Sri Lanka emerged as a bit of good news.

Sri Lanka is that little teardrop of an island, once known as Ceylon, off the the southern tip of India. Its recent history during the past three decades has been one of a civil war between the nation's Tamil people minority and a Sinhalese majority. The civil war came to an abrupt end in 2009 with a collapse of the Tamil forces and a complete victory of the Sri Lankan military.

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Sri Lanka, an island nation of nearly 21 million people, with beautiful beaches, mountainous terrain that supports a tea sector, and the scene of a tragic civil war for 30 years pitting the two largest population groups against each other. map is from Encyclopaedia Britannica used at www.citelighter.com

A recent provincial election (the first since the war's conclusion) resulted in an overwhelming victory for the Tamil National Alliance (TNA). The first words from the leader of the party, TNA leader R. Sampanthan, were conciliatory, saying "his party is ready to participate in the Parliament Select Committee appointed to resolve the national issue if the government agrees to a meaningful measure to devolve power." At the same time, addressing a media briefing in Colombo, Sri Lanka's Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa, who is in charge of the development in the war-torn North, said the government is willing to work together with the TNA within the framework of the Constitution. "Minister Rajapaksa stressed that now the TNA has received the power they have responsibility to fulfill the needs of the Tamil people. He expressed hope that the Tamil party would not lead the northern people to another separatist struggle."

Tamil National Alliance leader, R. Sampanthan, now has a political platform from which to negotiate with the national government. Photo from dbsjeyaraj.com


Sri Lankan Economic Development Minister Basil Rajakaksa, has been overseeing the aftermath of the Sri Lankan civil war, and was the first to respond on behalf of the national government to the victory of the TNA in the northern provincial elections. Photo from www.onlanka.com

A quick summary. The defeated Tamil people, concentrated in the north of the country, have a stronger more unified voice now, and want their elected leader to pursue a policy of greater autonomy for the "distinct Tamil people" in their historical lands. The Sri Lankan government, overseeing the victory over armed separatists four years ago, also want to move forward in a positive fashion - one thinks that elections themselves is a step forward.

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The rusting hulk of this tank (personnel carrier, etc.?) along Sri Lanka's northeast coastline is a reminder of the recent civil war, and the continuing efforts of the Tamil and Sinhalese peoples to find a different path this time. Photo from http://blog.naver.com

As Teatree thinks about it, there are some similarities between this story and the previous post about the Philippines where separatists have moved to seek autonomy in practical aspects of government, in spite of sporadic outbreaks of violence. The temptation of advancing a cause through violence.

One also thinks back to the Muslim Brotherhood winning elections in Egypt within a year of the former Egyptian President Mubarak's loss of power, and how quickly the new President Morsi attempted to move beyond constitutional limits by issuing decrees, etc. So many ways to instigate violence and further instability rather than carefully treading a path that avoids them.

The Syrian civil war spreads, and morphs towards a Sunni-Shia confrontation

The Syrian civil war is heating up and spreading, more countries are finding themselves pulled closer to the conflict.

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In spite of many nations hopes this conflict would find a solution in the past two years, negotiations have gone nowhere ...

Regarding the US, as the Wall Street Journal put it a few days ago, "It took two years, 93,000 casualties, the use of chemical weapons, and the growing prospect of victory by strongman Bashar Assad and his Iranian patrons, but President Obama has finally decided to arm the Syrian rebels." The question remains who to arm: moderate rebel groups are the preference, but over time those factions have been diminished compared to the rising influence and military prowess of the extremist rebels (al-Qaeda affiliates), and then with what type and amounts of weaponry. I guess we'll find out.

Is this the look of things to come in Syria?

Now Egypt has shut down official diplomatic contacts with Bashar al-Assad. As a CBS news article yesterday noted, "Egypt's Islamist president announced Saturday that he was cutting off diplomatic relations with Syria and closing Damascus' embassy in Cairo, decisions made amid growing calls from hard-line Sunni clerics in Egypt and elsewhere to launch a "holy war" against Syria's embattled regime.

Mohammed Morsi told thousands of supporters at a rally in Cairo that his government was also withdrawing the Egyptian charge d'affaires from Damascus. He called on Lebanon's Hezbollah to leave Syria, where the Iranian-backed Shiite militant group has been fighting alongside troops loyal to embattled President Bashar Assad against the mostly Sunni rebels. "Hezbollah must leave Syria. This is serious talk: There is no business or place for Hezbollah in Syria," said Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected president."

Egypt's leader Morsi is being called a co-conspirator with the US and Israel, of all things, by Syria. He has openly called for a no-fly zone in Syria to protect rebel held areas.

As mentioned in the CBS quote, Sunni clerics started issuing calls for jihad last week against Assad and his new supporter, Hezbollah. And with those calls, the division between the two main Islamic streams of doctrine are becoming more apparent and strident.

Sunni Muslims are by far the largest of the two groupings. The division stems from a dispute after the death of the Prophet Mohammed over who would next guide the Muslim faith. Iran's Shia revolution in 1979 increased the tensions between the two groups as well, leading to a quiet but serious rivalry between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran.

Just to be clear - there are plenty of terrorist/extremists groups in both camps. The Sunni perspective has the clear lead with al-Qaeda (and all its affiliates across North Africa), the Taliban, Chechnyan groups, and Hamas. The Shia have their own, on the other hand, in the form of Hezbollah.

Headgear and clothing. Sunnis wear kerchiefs ...

Shiites prefer turbans ...

And in both divisions, the closer or purer (or more extreme) perspectives of Islam become in regard to women, they "get" to dress like this.

The latest outrage from Sunni extremist attacks on women occurred in the past two days in Quetta, Pakistan, where a bomb on a bus killed 14 female students and injured 22, and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militants attacked a hospital treating survivors, where they killed another 11 people. Educated women are apparently a huge threat and offense to these extremists. But control of women's activities and clothing extend throughout the faith - honor killings, voting restrictions, and even limits driving are in evidence everywhere.

At the moment, we have Shia Iran supporting Shia Assad, with the help of Shia Hezbollah. The Sunni Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Qatar have been quietly but actively supporting the Sunni-dominated Syrian rebels - in which the more extremist forms are in the ascendancy.

Iraq is becoming fragile as Sunni extremists are blowing up Shia civilians with increasing intensity, Sunni Jordan and Turkey are trying to maintain low profiles, and now we have the most populous Arab nation - Egypt - headed by a reasonably militant group itself, the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, putting pressure on Assad.

US President George W. Bush's war in Iraq has been loudly and repeatedly condemned on a number of metrics. The deaths in that nation from 2003 to 2011 (from US invasion to withdrawal)have pretty well been pegged at 120-160 thousand. Yet in just over two years, Syria's conflict is approaching 100,000 deaths by all accounts, and chemical weapons have been clearly used.

And this war is still on the front end of a rising trajectory ...