Author Archives: Bill Humphrey

Bill Humphrey

About Bill Humphrey

Bill Humphrey is the primary host of WVUD's Arsenal For Democracy talk radio show and a local elected official.

Burkina Faso Army preps to hand back control to civilians

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In continuing the rapid implementation of the ECOWAS-sponsored transition plan, the military government in Burkina Faso (which took power just 15 days ago) today gave civilian groups a one day deadline to narrow down their proposed interim leaders to a consensus choice, who will govern until November 2015 elections. Here are some key highlights from the BBC report:

Burkina Faso’s military ruler has told activist groups they have until Sunday afternoon to provide a list of candidates for interim national leader.

Lt Col Isaac Zida agreed [to] a transition plan with civilian political groups on Thursday, but no leader was named. The groups have agreed to submit a list of candidates to a 23-member council, which will then select a single leader.

In a communique on Saturday, Col Zida said civilian groups had until noon on Sunday to provide a list of candidates to serve as interim president. He also said the constitution was back in force in order to “allow the start of the establishment of a civilian transition”.

Under the charter agreed on Thursday, the interim president will be chosen by a special college composed of religious, military, political, civil and traditional leaders.

 
Let’s take another look at that constitutional power vacuum situation that led to the temporary — and thankfully apparently short-lived — military takeover after President Compaoré‘s resignation. Since many Western media sources were being a bit lazy about reporting the details accurately, I spent a number of hours immediately following the coup carefully parsing the constitution along with 2012, 2013, and early 2014 news articles from the country. My conclusion: Due to an ongoing political dispute well before the current crisis, Burkina Faso doesn’t actually have a Senate set up to fill the role of Senate President, even thought that position is designated without alternative in the 2012 Constitution as the Acting President if the Faso presidency becomes vacant.

In other words, there was no way any transition would have been constitutional, even if the Army had not suspended the constitution and assumed control. So, the “restoration” of the constitution today by the military doesn’t really fix that fundamental, unavoidable problem that led to their takeover in the first place.

However, here’s some good news: The uncreated Senate was supposed to have been composed of indirectly-elected representatives of the local municipalities (etc), worker groups, industry groups, religious groups, and (some) customary/traditional authorities (I think most were disbanded in the 1980s by Sankara). Thus, the plan announced Saturday essentially “restores” the Constitution to the extent actually possible and seems to try to emulate its spirit as closely as possible to fill the remaining gaps where it’s simply not feasible to follow the letter. For example, the acting civilian president will be chosen — by a 23 member council of representatives from the aforementioned interest groups — from a list submitted by those same groups and the 40 odd political parties in the country (or a lot of them anyway). That’s basically as close as humanly possibly to a duly-composed (in spirit) pseudo-Senate choosing a leader to fill the role of Acting President in lieu of a Senate President who never existed. Moreover, the military government has not attempted to rewrite, amend, or promulgate a new constitution.

If this plan holds up, this may prove to be one of the most efficient and minimally invasive military interventions in the democratic system of a country in recent memory. The real test, of course, will continue through the transitional civilian leadership period and into new elections (and presumably a less arcane and broken constitution eventually). But this is still a huge step, and a lesson to other would-be military interventionists both in Burkina Faso and abroad.

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Saving Grace: Father Bernard Kinvi of Central African Republic

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The story of a Catholic priest, Father Bernard Kinvi, who protected Muslim civilians in Central African Republic from extremist Christian militias during the country’s reciprocal genocide, from late 2013 into early 2014, in its ongoing conflict:

At one point, 1,500 Muslims were living under the protection of a man whose only sources of power were his faith and the black cassock with a large red cross on the chest that he wears as a member of the Camillian order.
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From mid-January to April, Kinvi barely slept, terrified that if he closed his eyes the militia would fulfill their threats to murder all the Muslims in the mission. But bit-by-bit, lorry load by lorry load, the priest started to get the Muslims out of the area and over the border into Cameroon.

 
In contrast, French “peacekeepers” literally stood and watched Muslims being hacked to death in front of them by Christian extremists. Actual rescue missions, as in Rwanda in 1994, had to be staged by African peacekeepers.

Ten years from now, everyone is going to be asking why the world did nothing there. And there will be no good explanations or excuses.
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Worth the Weight? The ISIS currency is nearly here.

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Speaking of ISIS state-building, the pseudo-state is rolling out a new hard currency:

In an announcement on Thursday heralding a liberation from the “satanic usury-based global economic system,” the Islamic State said it would begin minting gold, silver and copper coins, in likenesses similar to the days of the seventh-century caliphs. The coins will have standardized weights and values, the announcement said, and they will be the legal tender of the lands controlled by the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

 
There’s plenty of back and forth debate by economists, in the Times article quoted above, on whether this is purely a propaganda move that can’t really avoid the pressures of the “global economic system” or is actually a savvy investment (which also avoids the “satanic usury” of the non-Islamic banking system that is forbidden under strict Sharia law). My instinct says it won’t matter much either way, since their “state” — as a territorial, governing entity — isn’t going to last very long.

I’m wondering what they’re planning to name it. I bet it will be called a “dīnār” because that was the name of the Umayyad caliphate’s gold coins (and actually remains the currency name for a lot of majority-Arab states, including Iraq), but that name, drawn from the Byzantine “dinarius,” seems awfully western to me for the Mesopotamian enemies of the Global West.

695 CE Umayyad dinar coin at the British Museum. (Wikimedia: "Umayyad Caliph 'Abd al-Malik: 'Caliphal Image solidus' or Standing Caliph solidus struck from 74-77 AH. Based on Byzantine numismatic traditions.")

695 CE Umayyad dinar coin at the British Museum. (Wikimedia: “Umayyad Caliph ‘Abd al-Malik: ‘Caliphal Image solidus’ or Standing Caliph solidus struck from 74-77 AH. Based on Byzantine numismatic traditions.”)

Islamic State Service Provider

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As I’ve said before several times — I really think think the make-or-break factor for would-be or quasi state actor organizations like ISIS is their ability to provide and sustain vital, basic-level government services and employment to their subject populations. Conversely, their opponents would have to find a way to disrupt the supporting physical infrastructure, the bureaucrats administrating the system, and the low-level employees implementing the policies each day.

The New York Times ran an article Thursday on how U.S. airstrikes have affected all three, but my main takeaway was more documentation of the brass-tacks approach of ISIS (once they stop mass-murdering people, of course):

It was not that the militants were popular in Raqqa [the “Islamic State” “capital”], according to nearly a dozen residents, who spoke in interviews in the city or across the border in Turkey. Rather, the Islamic State had become an indispensable service provider.
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Reflecting how civilian life in the area has become intertwined with the militants — who paid salaries, ran schools and directed traffic — 10 civilians were killed in a coalition airstrike on Sunday that hit one of the oil facilities run by the Islamic State, where many people had found work.

Acceptance of the Islamic State in northern Syria contrasts sharply with Iraq, where the group’s ascendance has been more contested and its response more brutal. Many Iraqis clamor for a return of the government, despite its unpopularity, especially in Sunni regions.

 
This extends and expands the point I made in early September (when the US intervention was limited to the occupied Iraqi zones, rather than the economic heart of ISIS), when I cited a Reuters report on ISIS bakeries, hydroelectric power plants, and telecoms in their so-called “Forat Province” administrative area. From Reuters:

According to one fighter, a former Assad employee is now in charge of mills and distributing flour to bakeries in Raqqa. Employees at the Raqqa dam, which provides the city with electricity and water, have remained in their posts.
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They have been helped by experts who have come from countries including in North Africa and Europe. The man Baghdadi appointed to run and develop Raqqa’s telecoms, for instance, is a Tunisian with a PhD in the subject who left Tunisia to join the group and serve “the state”.

 
Sure they can’t keep the lights on for more than six hours a day, and sure they’ve stupidly sent all their beat cops from Raqqa to Kobani in large convoys to be deployed in clusters that are easy targets for the United States Air Force. But they really were building a new state out of the civil war’s rubble before the Syrian and American planes finally showed up to put a stop to it. That’s not particularly laudable in their case per se, but it’s worth observing.

Recognized states across the region should take note: Ensuring day to day services reach the public is a tool of a universal language and creed, which fosters legitimacy and support … and even good will if the providers aren’t too murderous.

For most people, from one day to the next, it’s all about the quality and effectiveness of governance at the smallest and most local level. Everything is else is just world politics.

 

Theoretical maximum sphere of ISIS control as of September 4 2014, via Wikimedia, 3 weeks before US airstrikes began in Syria. Keep in mind that control was and is tenuous in outlying desert village areas and limited to major thoroughfares/cities in many areas. There is debate over how to map this reality more accurately.

Theoretical maximum sphere of ISIS control as of September 4 2014, via Wikimedia 3 weeks before US airstrikes began in Syria. Keep in mind that control was and is tenuous in outlying desert village areas and limited to major thoroughfares/cities in many areas. There has been considerable debate over how to map the situation more accurately.

Boston Globe report: Coalition of the Occasional Airstrike

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Shockingly, the much-trumpeted Third Coalition on Iraq and the Arab Coalition on Syria, aren’t exactly pulling their weights in Operation Inherent Resolve, according to an investigation by the Boston Globe:

The military coalition attacking the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has been heralded by President Obama as “almost unprecedented,” especially for the participation of Arab air forces. Indeed, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Bahrain have helped carry out strikes inside Syria.

But as the air operation enters its fourth month, most of the missions — including the vast majority of bombing runs — are still being conducted by US forces, with the majority of the others performed by Western allies, according to a Globe review of official statistics and interviews with officials from partner countries.
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Eighty-six percent of the 8,007 missions flown between Aug. 8 and Nov. 3 were carried out by the United States, according to US Air Forces Central Command. These include bombing runs, intelligence-gathering flights, and midair re-fuelings.

The coalition expanded after Sept. 23, when the strikes were extended into Syria, to include the participation of the four Arab allies. But the United States is still flying more than 75 percent of the missions, according to the data — or 3,320 out of 4,410 since that date.

That comes even as Western allies such as Denmark, Australia, France, and Belgium have recently stepped up their role.

While the Western partners commonly discuss their role publicly, Arab governments have provided scant information since the widely publicized strikes in September.

One exception is Bahrain, which participated in the initial phase of airstrikes against ISIS in Syria in late September but has not dropped bombs since September, according to Salman Al Jalahma, a spokesman for Bahrain’s embassy in Washington.

(At least Bahrain’s slacking is probably for the best.)

Other Arab participants in the military coalition declined to provide details, including Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan. The government of Saudi Arabia did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Even many of the attack missions attributed to Arab nations are limited in nature, according to US military officials. For example, while the Gulf nations have participated in more than 20 percent of the fighter sorties in Syria, their pilots are often serving as “mission commanders” or “escorts.” Mission commanders don’t always drop bombs and escorts generally never do, according to the command.

 
In defense of the United Arab Emirates Air Force, it’s probably hard to choose between bombing ISIS in Syria and bombing random minor groups in Libya with whom you have political disagreements.

Anyway, the best news of all is that we’re spending $8 million a day on this borderline-solo project on the other side of the world. I will keep that in mind when we’re next told that we can’t possibly afford to shell out a few million here and there over the course of a year to boost social programs.

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“Myanmar needs time” says transitional military gov’t

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A New York Times op-ed by former Admiral Soe Thein, who holds the role of what I think is the equivalent of Chief-of-Staff to the President, under the transitional government. He makes some fair points:

What we want more than anything is that friends of Myanmar around the world understand the nuances of what is happening and be aware of the big picture: that we are a small nation between giant neighbors, poor and isolated for decades, with entrenched systems and views that have grown up over generations, now trying decisively to move toward peace and democracy. It is a grand experiment, but we are determined to succeed.

Volkswagen US still driving toward unionization

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volkswagenBack in February, German automaker Volkswagen’s U.S. division attempted to unionize their own workers in Tennessee, the center of union-free US auto manufacturing. That effort was thwarted by illegal interference by anti-union politicians and threats of cancellation of state subsidies and incentives. But it didn’t stop the company’s pro-union management.

As I explained in February, most major German corporations are big fans of cooperating closely with unions (at least far more than their American or British counterparts). This cooperation increases social-corporate harmony and it encourages win-win negotiations instead of everyone trying to bleed everyone else dry. This tradition of having unions and management work together in formalized joint committees, and (in Germany) even usually having the companies partly owned by the workers themselves to give them an official say in management and a stake in the company’s long-term health, has been a key tool for consensus-building and smoothing potential tensions over.

Despite the defeat in February, a collection of over 700 workers in Chattanooga voluntarily formed their own United Auto Workers local later in the year for the purposes of eventually unionizing the company’s labor force, as desired by management. Initially, it seemed like this might be delayed until some time well into 2015 by the setback in February and the local political opposition.

But Volkswagen is so determined to unionize its US employees over the objections of Tennessee Republicans (and to get around so-called “Right to Work” anti-union laws) that they held negotiations with the United Auto Workers in Germany to come to an arrangement to bring a union on board for its workers. Reportedly, they will be partially recognizing unionization of their Tennessee workers some time in the next few days. The UAW says that the interim deal, in place at least until a final vote to unionize (which will still have to come later), does not cover collective bargaining but does allow for a clear process of worker-management meetings, in the aforementioned German postwar tradition.

From the Wall Street Journal summary, the German approach is precisely what the company hoped to implement at minimum:

The new policy could allow the auto maker to accomplish its goal of establishing a German-style “works council” where workers and managers set up the rules and operations for the plant, but might prevent the UAW from gaining full bargaining control at the plant because of the presence of smaller unions.

The company said it is creating three tiers of representation for workers based on the percentage of hourly workers who sign up. The rule is expected to allow a UAW local that claims more than half the plant’s hourly work force has joined it to gain influence at the plant, but it also allows for other unions to set up shop.

Volkswagen said the new policy will govern its interactions with labor organizations who represent a significant percentage of factory employees. Volkswagen will use an external auditor to verify the percentage “to determine what level of engagement has been reached,” it said.
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VW has a works council at most of its plants and would like to have one in the U.S. These worker-management groups set up schedules, benefits, operations and even take part in the business side of the operation. Under U.S. labor law, workers can’t participate in a works council unless they are represented by an independent union, and not a “company union.”

 
The remaining big question is whether the UAW can overcome the opposition of anti-UAW workers and Tennessee officials who are putting together a rival “union” to dilute the future bargaining power of the UAW within the Tennessee operation of Volkswagen.